Criminal Justice: The D.A.'s Wrong Guess

When he left Manhattan's City College one night last winter, handsome Mike Schaffer, 19, was feeling good: in a basketball game against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he had scored 18 points and led his team to victory. With his girl, his sister and eight friends, Mike headed for an ice cream parlor to celebrate. Up drove Edward Weissman, 19, a factory worker, who shouted flirtatiously at one of the girls. Hot words followed. According to police, Weissman gunned his motor, drove straight at the group, hit Mike Schaffer and dragged him half a block to his death. Weissman never stopped. So stunned was one witness, the father of another City College player, that on leaving the police station he died of a heart attack.

After the police caught Weissman by tracing his license number, a grand jury indicted him for first-degree murder, vehicular homicide, and leaving the scene of an accident. Yet last week Eddie Weissman got off with only a mild sentence for second-degree manslaughter. Why?

In a typical dilemma, the D.A. was stymied by the problem of intent. Weissman was charged with first-degree murder under a law that covers any "depraved" attempt to kill people in general, though the culprit aims at no one in particular. But the law has never yet been applied successfully to an auto-murderer, only against crowd attackers using bombs or bullets. Weissman might have argued that he was simply trying to drive away from danger when Schaffer got in his way. In short, the D.A. did not think he could have proved intent to murder in general, let alone in particular.

The prosecution next thought of second-degree murder, but that requires proof of intent to kill an individual. Seeing no other choice, the prosecution finally allowed Weissman to plead guilty to second-degree manslaughter on the theory that he would still get a rap of up to 15 years. But the D.A. guessed wrong. Accepting Weissman's plea, State Supreme Court Justice Frederick Backer mulled over a psychiatric report and gave Mike Schaffer's killer 3½ to seven years.