This Day in History, 1993: LIRR Shooting
Dec. 7th, 2005 06:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mabfanOn this day in 1993, twelve years ago, a man named Colin Ferguson opened fire on a Long Island Railroad commuter train from New York City, killing 6 and injuring 19. Other train passengers stopped the perpetrator by tackling and holding him down.
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Colin Ferguson was a mentally unbalanced man from Jamaica who spent years on the West Coast before coming to New York in 1993. On December 7, he boarded a 5:33 p.m. train out of Penn Station carrying an automatic pistol, and as the train pulled into Garden City, Ferguson began running down the aisle and shooting passengers at random.
Famous defense attorney William Kunstler initially represented Ferguson, but his strategy of arguing that Ferguson was not responsible due to "black rage" infuriated even Ferguson himself. After firing Kunstler, Ferguson decided to act as his own lawyer.
In the resulting trial, which took place in January and February 1996, Ferguson opened by claiming that he was not the shooter. He argued that a white man had stolen his gun and shot the commuters, then pinned the crime on Ferguson. But he later changed his story, stating that a man who shared Ferguson's name and facial features was the real killer.
When Ferguson asked nearly all of the surviving victims, in turn, to identify the killer under oath, they each pinned the blame squarely on him. After the judge denied Ferguson's request that President Clinton and Governor Cuomo testify, Ferguson decided to forego his own right to testify. On February 17, 1996, the jury convicted Ferguson of 6 counts of murder and 22 counts of attempted murder. He received six life terms and will not be eligible for parole.
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(Reference: Above taken from This Day in History)
A few interesting follow-ups from that incident:
1. Ferguson was clearly not playing with a full deck, as evidenced by his behavior as his own lawyer. I remember a lot of people asking the psychiatrist who interviewed Ferguson how he could possibly have declared Ferguson sane. His reasonable reply was that he never said Ferguson was sane; he said that Ferguson was competent to stand trial, meaning that he did possess a clear understanding of right and wrong.
2. Long Island nurse Carolyn McCarthy lost her husband Dennis in the shooting, and her son Kevin was partially paralyzed by a shot to the head. McCarthy ended up running for Congress as a gun control activist. She continues to represent New York's Fourth Congressional District, currently in her fifth term.
3. While Ferguson was on trial and in jail, somehow or other he ended up calling NYU Law School, where my younger brother was a student at the time, and was connected to him. Still not sure how or why that happened.
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Colin Ferguson was a mentally unbalanced man from Jamaica who spent years on the West Coast before coming to New York in 1993. On December 7, he boarded a 5:33 p.m. train out of Penn Station carrying an automatic pistol, and as the train pulled into Garden City, Ferguson began running down the aisle and shooting passengers at random.
Famous defense attorney William Kunstler initially represented Ferguson, but his strategy of arguing that Ferguson was not responsible due to "black rage" infuriated even Ferguson himself. After firing Kunstler, Ferguson decided to act as his own lawyer.
In the resulting trial, which took place in January and February 1996, Ferguson opened by claiming that he was not the shooter. He argued that a white man had stolen his gun and shot the commuters, then pinned the crime on Ferguson. But he later changed his story, stating that a man who shared Ferguson's name and facial features was the real killer.
When Ferguson asked nearly all of the surviving victims, in turn, to identify the killer under oath, they each pinned the blame squarely on him. After the judge denied Ferguson's request that President Clinton and Governor Cuomo testify, Ferguson decided to forego his own right to testify. On February 17, 1996, the jury convicted Ferguson of 6 counts of murder and 22 counts of attempted murder. He received six life terms and will not be eligible for parole.
---
(Reference: Above taken from This Day in History)
A few interesting follow-ups from that incident:
1. Ferguson was clearly not playing with a full deck, as evidenced by his behavior as his own lawyer. I remember a lot of people asking the psychiatrist who interviewed Ferguson how he could possibly have declared Ferguson sane. His reasonable reply was that he never said Ferguson was sane; he said that Ferguson was competent to stand trial, meaning that he did possess a clear understanding of right and wrong.
2. Long Island nurse Carolyn McCarthy lost her husband Dennis in the shooting, and her son Kevin was partially paralyzed by a shot to the head. McCarthy ended up running for Congress as a gun control activist. She continues to represent New York's Fourth Congressional District, currently in her fifth term.
3. While Ferguson was on trial and in jail, somehow or other he ended up calling NYU Law School, where my younger brother was a student at the time, and was connected to him. Still not sure how or why that happened.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 03:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 06:26 pm (UTC)BTW, I think competency to stand trial is not merely "know right from wrong" (which I thought was a sanity issue) but also "can participate in his own defense."
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Date: 2005-12-07 07:05 pm (UTC)But a fair amount of other things happened on this date. There was actually once a Jeopardy! category of "December 7th"; had I been on the show that day I would've been severely tempted to buzz in and announce that I was going to try to run the category without seeing any clues. Would've succeeded too, by saying "What are, in no particular order, Pearl Harbor, George Bush, Delaware, Apollo 17, and Larry Bird?"
PH is obvious. At the time, the first Bush had recently made a significant gaffe in a talk at a veterans' gathering by saying Pearl Harbor had happened on September 7th, Delaware was the first state to adopt the Constitution in 1787, Apollo 17, the last manned moon mission to date, blasted off shortly after midnight in 1972 (a cool birthday present; it was originally scheduled for the 6th, but holds delayed it to the 7th. First night launch too), and it's also Larry Bird's birthday. The last would've been the only one I wasn't sure of; Johnny Bench also shares the birthday.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 09:22 pm (UTC)Would Jeopardy! have let you gotten away with that? I wonder...
no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 09:58 pm (UTC)I'm also fond of how December 7, 1995, is when Galileo reached Jupiter. I was excited about that for all six years of its journey. Because, hey, that's my birthday! I was 11 when it launched.
Can't believe Galileo got to Jupiter a decade ago. I feel old.