Fed: Fresh trial looms in Yankel Rosenbaum murder

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Fed: Fresh trial looms in Yankel Rosenbaum murder

By Royal Abbott

MELBOURNE, April 16 AAP - Jury selection began in New York today for another trialconnected to the 1991 murder of Melbourne scholar, Yankel Rosenbaum.

Mr Rosenbaum had been in New York as a rabbinical student for only one week when hewas caught up in a race riot in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and fatally stabbed by a groupof black youths.

Lemrick Nelson, 27, will be tried for violating Mr Rosenbaum's civil rights by attackinghim because of his religion during the race riot in which Mr Rosenbaum was killed.

The current trial will be the third for Lemrick Nelson, who was acquitted in 1992on a charge of murdering Mr Rosenbaum.

He was also convicted of violating Mr Rosenbaum's civil rights in a federal trialin 1997, but that judgement was overturned on appeal 15 months ago.

New York Jewish community leader Isaac Abraham told AAP that jury selection began todayfor the current trial.

The jury is expected to be chosen with fastidious attention to detail as the appealcourt's decision to overturn the earlier conviction was based on the makeup of the jury.

The Second Circuit Appeal Court decided the judge had gone too far to ensure the jurywas ethnically balanced.

Through the 12 years since Mr Rosenbaum had the bad luck to stumble into violent racialunrest sparked by a 7-year-old black boy being run over by a car driven by a Hasidic Jew,Lemrick Nelson has always maintained his innocence.

Police claimed they found a bloodied folding knife in Nelson's pocket after Mr Rosenbaum'sstabbing but the accused has been resolute in saying he was framed.

In 1997 Nelson was sentenced to more than 19 years after being convicted of violatingMr Rosenbaum's civil rights by attacking him because of his religion.

The jury selection will continue tomorrow, Mr Abraham said, with the trial likely tostart on April 29.

Two weeks has been set aside for jury selection from an abnormally large pool of 493likely candidates, with the retrial set to take possibly three weeks.

The New York Times today said the Crown Heights neighbourhood seemed like a relic fromanother civic era since blacks and Jews had rebuilt new ties since the troubles of theearly 1990s.

Nelson, who is now 27, remains in prison, despite the fact his conviction was overturned.

AAP ra/ce/kim/bwl

KEYWORD: ROSENBAUM