Max Antoine's Defense Case.

• Author: Gbur, Edith
• Position: Police brutality case

Police brutality victim Max Antoine is a 30-yr. old Haitian-American who narrowly survived a beating by three Irvington, New Jersey police officers three years ago. As a result he is paralyzed from the waist down, blind in one eye and deaf in one ear. He was further victimized a year later--indicted by a Grand Jury on 13 trumped-up charges. On October 18 the criminal trial was postponed until December 6, 1999. His attorney Jean D. Larosiliere said this was the fifth time the case has been put on hold; but the state refuses to dismiss the charges.

On October 16, about 250 participated in a protest rally and march from the Irvington police station to the Essex County Courthouse. Max addressed the protesters. "I want the public to know that I am 100% innocent of the charges. These charges were maliciously fabricated by the Essex Prosecutors office and the Irvington police...while the three officers, Phillip Rucker, Alfredo Aleman, Keith Stouch, are still working and collecting our taxes." Max Antoine's supporters planned to enlarge the coalition and stage an action designed to attract national and international support.

For the past three years the truth about Max's case was kept from the public by scanty, biased news coverage and sensational story headlines. This all changed when Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair's article," Max Antoine, New Jersey's Louima" appeared in CounterPunch and the New York Press and was circulated to about 135,000. The article asked,

Is there a rationing policy by the press that we are allowed only one atrocity against a Haitian per decade? While the recent guilty plea of Justin Volpe in the Abner Louima torture trial generated some headlines, an equally brutal incident in Irvington, NJ, has passed by virtually without attention. This case involves a gang of cops who forced their way without probable cause into an apartment where a party was going on, hurled racist language, beat up several guests and nearly killed one of them, after he asked for their badge numbers. It also involves complicit emergency medical teams who refused treatment to the battered victims, a prosecutor's office that chose to go after the victims rather than the cops and an utterly indifferent press. In other words, a typical day on the streets in black America.

The Antoines also sought the help of the Clinton administration; however, the Justice Department has refused to act except to give lip service.

Antoine however, has been charged...