Rabbi’s Killer Found Guilty

Rose Schroge, founder and president of Concerned Citizens, an organization committed to defending the rights of Jews in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, said it was ironic that Rabbi David Okunov, a 68-year-old Hasidic rabbi who has killed while on his way to synagogue services last Oct. 25, had come to America to escape persecution in the Soviet Union only to be wantonly murdered on the streets of New York.

Carl Miller, 18, who resided near the edge of the Crown Heights section, was found guilty last Thursday of the killing by a Supreme Court jury in Brooklyn which had deliberated for a total of nine hours over a two-day period. Miller, who was arrested last Nov. 30 and had been in jail since, had been charged with the fatal shooting.

Police said Miller was a member of a group called the Five Percenters, described as comprising mostly Black youths. The name is said to reflect their belief that 95 percent of the Black people do not strongly resist exploitation by whites and that members of the group are among the five percent who do resist.

Miller showed no emotion when the jury verdict was announced. He had insisted that he had been in an automobile in front of his girlfriend’s home in Queens at the time of the killing. He faces a maximum of 25 years in prison. Sentencing has been set for Oct. 20 in the court of Supreme Court Justice Sybil Kooper.

Another youth, Daryl Brown, 17, was the key witness presented by the prosecutor, Barbara Newman. Brown testified he had seen Miller grab. Okunov and shoot him after the rabbi screamed.

Okunov, from whom the killer took only a small case containing the rabbi’s prayershawl and prayerbook, come to this country from the USSR three years ago. He founded the Friends of Refugees in Eastern Europe (FREE), which provided a variety of services to Jewish refugees coming to Brooklyn, according to Mrs. Schrage. Sources said that while police stressed the feeling that robbery and not race was the motive for the killing, the slaying had added to long-time tensions between Hasidim and Blacks in Crown Heights. Large groups of Hasidim had packed the courtroom for most sessions of the five-day trial but all of them left the courtroom before the jury returned its verdict.

Mrs. Schroge said that Miller was convicted by a jury of his peers by due process of law but Okunov “was convicted in the streets with a single gunshot.” She told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Concerned Citizens has about 500 members and seeks to be “eyes and ears” for victims of crime in the area. She said that the activities of FREE would be continued.