Metzger Goes on Trial in $10-Million Suit Tied to Beating Death of Black

PORTLAND, Ore. —  A white supremacist accused of inciting the fatal beating of a black man told jurors Wednesday the $10-million wrongful-death lawsuit against him is government persecution.

“This is a stacked deck. There’s no doubt about it,” Tom Metzger, who is handling his own defense, said during opening arguments. “Understand that I am a radical figure and I’ve had to fight the government from the get-go.”

Metzger, 52, of Fallbrook, is the leader of the White Aryan Resistance and a former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon.

The lawsuit was filed by Engedaw Berhanu, the uncle of an African man slain by neo-Nazi “skinheads” in November, 1988. It alleges that Metzger incited the slaying by sending a representative to Portland to preach hate and violence.

“It doesn’t have that much to do with Mr. Berhanu,” Metzger said of the trial. “This is an insult to my intelligence.”

But attorney Morris Dees, of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., told the Multnomah County circuit jury that evidence would link Metzger to the slaying of Mulugeta Seraw.

He described Metzger as a “pathetic” man whose business is hate and whose agenda is to “set about training these young skinheads to go out and do violence.”

“In America, we have the right to hate, but we don’t have the right to hurt,” Dees said. “We’re going to ask you to return a verdict so big, that on the south border of the state of Oregon there’s going to be a wall $10 million high that’s going to stop Tom Metzger from coming back to this good state.”

Dees said a vice president of White Aryan Resistance met with Portland skinheads minutes before they attacked Seraw, 27, of Ethiopia.

In their meeting with WAR Youth vice president Dave Mazzella, the skinheads learned techniques to use in assaulting blacks, Dees said.

The three--Kenneth Mieske, Kyle Brewster and Steven Strasser--later pleaded guilty to the attack.

Seraw was returning home from a party about the time the meeting ended.

“The three walked out . . . and stood on the corner about 100 feet away. Kyle Brewster looked up the street and said, ‘Hey, I see a nigger. Let’s go over there and mess with him,’ ” Dees said.

“They drove directly up in front of Seraw and his friends. They drove so close these Ethiopians could not go around them. Then they did what they had been taught,” he said.

Seraw was beaten to death with a baseball bat, which “came down on his head with such force . . . it just took the whole top of his head off.”

Metzger said his views are radical, but he denied advocating violence and said his police record is clean.

“They may not like his views, but they’ve never ever found Tom Metzger going over the line,” he said.

Metzger said he would not call witnesses to dispute the plaintiff’s contention that he commands legions because he has no legions.

Mieske, who admitting beating Seraw with a baseball bat, testified Wednesday that Mazzella visited him and made a telephone call to Metzger a month before Seraw’s slaying.

He said he kicked Seraw in the head with a pair of steel-toed boots he had bought from another WAR member.