The Nation - News from Aug. 17, 1989

New York state’s highest court, the State Court of Appeals, agreed to hear the appeals of three white men--Scott Kern, Jon Lester and Jason Ladone--convicted in the 1986 Howard Beach attack, in which a black man fleeing a group of whites was hit by a car and killed. Kern and Lester, both 20, and Ladone, 18, were convicted in 1987 of 2nd-degree manslaughter and 1st-degree assault for attacking three black men in the Howard Beach section of the New York City borough of Queens. One of the black men, 23-year-old Michael Griffith, was struck by a car and killed as he fled. Another man, Cedric Sandiford, was beaten with tree limbs and a baseball bat.