MIAMI -- Prosecutors have decided not to try a 20-year-old black man a fourth time for the beating death of a white motorist during Miami's bloody 1980 race riots.
Nathaniel Lane, freed Wednesday for the first time in 19 months, said he wanted to 'be a man.' His previous trials ended with hung juries.
'I'm going to make a new life,' he said. 'I'm going to stand up and be a man. I'm going to straighten my life out and be with my kids and family. I'm going to go get my mom's (Christmas) present.'
Lane was charged with the May 1980 murder of Benny Higdon, 21, one of three white men dragged from a car and beaten to death during three days of rioting in the predominantly black Liberty City area in downtown Miami.
Assistant State Attorneys Sam Rabin and Leonard Glick, who unsuccessfully prosecuted Lane on first degree murder charges, told Circuit Court Judge Herbert Klein at a hearing that it was 'pointless' to try Lane for a fourth time.
Lane's two trials, in April and July, resulted in mistrials when jurors, splitting along racial lines, voted 9-3 and 7-5 for conviction. At the third trial, which ended last Friday, the jury of 10 whites and two blacks divided 7-5 for acquittal.
Higdon, Robert Owens, 15, and Charles Barreca, 15, were driving home from a fishing trip when they were attacked and killed by rioters.
Samuel Lightsey, 17, and brothers Leonard Capers, 21, and Lawrence Capers, 25, were found guilty in February of the three murders. A fourth defendant, Patrick Moore, 17, was acquitted on all counts.
Eighteen people died in the disturbance that erupted following a Tampa jury's acquittal of four white Metro Dade County police officers for the beating death of black insurance agent Arthur McDuffie.
Lane's is not the last of the riot-related trials. In January, trials are scheduled for a white man charged with shooting a black spectator and for a black man accused of setting a white motorist's car on fire with the man trapped inside.
