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Vincent Jen Chin (simplified Chinese: 陈果仁; traditional Chinese: 陳果仁; 1955 – June 23, 1982) was a Chinese American beaten to death in June 1982 in the United States, in the Detroit, Michigan enclave of Highland Park by Chrysler plant superintendent Ronald Ebens, with the help of his stepson, Michael Nitz. The murder generated public outrage over the lenient sentencing the two men originally received in a plea bargain, as the attack, which included blows to the head from a baseball bat, possessed many attributes consistent with hate crimes. Many of the layoffs in Detroit's auto industry, including Nitz's in 1979, had been due to the increasing market share of Japanese automakers, leading to allegations that Chinese American Vincent Chin received racially charged comments before his death. The case became a rallying point for the Asian American community, and Ebens and Nitz were put on trial for violating Chin's civil rights. Because the subsequent Federal prosecution was a result of public pressure from a coalition of many Asian ethnic organizations, Vincent Chin's murder is often considered the beginning of a pan-ethnic Asian American movement.

Homicide

On the night of June 19, 1982, a fight ensued at the Fancy Pants strip club on Woodward Avenue in Highland Park where Chin was having his bachelor party. The group was thrown out and after a heated exchange of words subsequently parted ways. Ebens instigated the incident by declaring, "It's because of you little motherfuckers that we're out of work," referring to U.S. auto manufacturing jobs being lost to Japan, despite the fact that Chin was not Japanese. Ebens and Nitz searched the neighborhood for 20 to 30 minutes and even paid another man 20 dollars to help look for Chin, before finding him at a McDonald's restaurant. Chin tried to escape, but was held by Nitz while Ebens repeatedly bludgeoned Chin with a baseball bat. Chin was struck at least four times with the bat, including blows to the head. As Chin slipped into a coma, he whispered to his friend "It's not fair." When rushed to Henry Ford Hospital, he was brain-dead and died after four days in a coma, on June 23, 1982.

Legal history

State criminal charges

Ronald Ebens was arrested and taken into custody at the scene of the murder by two off-duty police officers who had witnessed the beating. Ebens and Nitz were convicted in a county court for manslaughter by Wayne County Circuit Judge Charles Kaufman, after a plea bargain brought the charges down from second-degree murder. They served no jail time, were given three years probation, fined $3,000 and ordered to pay $780 in court costs. In a response letter to protests from American Citizens for Justice, Kaufman said, "These weren't the kind of men you send to jail... You don't make the punishment fit the crime; you make the punishment fit the criminal."

Federal civil rights charges

The verdict angered the Asian American community in the Detroit area and around the country. Journalist Helen Zia and lawyer Liza Cheuk May Chan (陳綽薇) led the fight for federal charges, which resulted in the men being accused of two counts of violating Chin's civil rights, under Section 245 of Title 18 of the United States Code. For these charges, it was not enough that Ebens had injured Chin, but that "a substantial motivating factor for the defendant's actions was Mr. Chin's race, color, or national origin, and because Mr. Chin had been enjoying a place of entertainment which serves the public." Because of possible mitigating factors that could lead to reasonable doubt, such as intoxication leading to the defendant's inability to form the specific intent, the prosecution's proving the evidence of uttered racial slurs were not self-sufficient for conviction. In addition, the defense found Racine Colwell, the witness who overheard the "It's because of you motherfuckers we're out of work" remark, to have received some clemency on a jail sentence for a prostitution charge, which suggested that the government may have tried to cut a deal for her testimony.

The 1984 federal civil rights case against the men found Ebens guilty of the second count and sentenced him to 25 years in prison; Nitz was acquitted of both counts. After an appeal, Ebens' conviction was overturned on a legal technicality in 1986—a federal appeals court found an attorney improperly coached prosecution witnesses.

After a retrial that was moved to Cincinnati, Ohio due to the publicity of the case in Detroit, a jury cleared Ebens of all charges in 1987.

Civil suits

A civil suit for the unlawful death of Vincent Chin was settled out of court on March 23, 1987. Michael Nitz was ordered to pay $50,000 in $30 weekly installments over the following 10 years. Ronald Ebens was ordered to pay $1.5 million, at $200/month for the first two years and 25% income or $200/month thereafter, whichever was greater. This represented the projected loss of income from Vincent Chin's engineering position, as well as Lily Chin's loss of Vincent's services as laborer and driver. However, the estate of Vincent Chin would not be allowed to garnish social security, disability, or Ebens' pension from Chrysler, nor could the estate place a lien on Ebens' house.

In November 1989, Ebens was forced to reappear in court for a creditor's hearing, where he detailed his finances and reportedly pledged to make good on his debt to the Chin estate. However, in 1997, the Chin estate was forced to renew the civil suit, as it was allowed to do every ten years. With accrued interest and other charges, the adjusted total became $4,683,653.89.

Sometime after the murder, the Fancy Pants strip club was permanently closed and subsequently torn down.

Legacy

The murder is controversial because of the racial motivations of the attack but more importantly, the lenient sentencing that white offenders received from the court trial.

The events occurred at a time when there was widespread anti-Japanese feeling due to Japan's success in international trade, and there had been a number of well-publicized charity events in which, in exchange for donating money, people were allowed to smash a Japanese car with a blunt object. In fact, Japanese competition had little to do with the decline of auto industry in Detroit. Several Detroit-based auto company began to relocate their factorial plants to outside of the United States to reduce labor cost, resulting in the massive lay off back home. Ronald Takaki observes in the book Strangers from a Different Shore: "(American automobile companies) have assembly plants in places like Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, which has come to be called 'Little Detroit.' They have even invested in the Japanese auto companies themselves: General Motors owns a 34 percent of Isuzu (which builds the Buick Opel), Ford 25 percent of Mazda (which makes transmission for the Escort), and Chrysler 15 percent of Mitsubishi (which produces the Colt and Charger)" (483). The attack was a hate crime, but pre-dated hate crime laws in the United States.

Nevertheless, during a 1998 House of Representatives hearing on the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 1997, Congressman John Conyers, Jr. suggested that the problem in making people sufficiently aware of the causes for and injustices of the Vincent Chin case was that it was a political "hot potato" that did not get picked up for "political reasons" with respect to the automobile industry.

Chin's case has been cited by some Asian Americans to support the idea that they are seen as underprivileged citizens or "perpetual foreigners" compared to "real" Americans. Chin's mother, Lily Chin, stated: "What kind of law is this? What kind of justice? This happened because my son is Chinese. If two Chinese killed a white person, they must go to jail, maybe for their whole lives... Something is wrong with this country."

In September 1987, not wanting to be reminded of her son's tragedy, Vincent Chin's mother, Lily Chin, moved from Oak Park, Michigan back to Guangzhou, China where she had grown up. She returned to the United States for medical treatment in late 2001 and died on June 9, 2002. Prior to her death, Lily Chin had established a scholarship in Vincent's memory, to be administered by American Citizens for Justice.

References in popular culture

• In 1983, Lily Chin appeared on The Phil Donahue Show to bring public attention to the case.
• In The New Twilight Zone episode, "Wong's Lost and Found Emporium", the murder of Vincent Chin is given as the final reason for the main character's loss of compassion.
• The documentary film Who Killed Vincent Chin? by Renee Tajima and Christine Choy was nominated for an 1989 Academy Award for Best Documentary.
• Because They Thought He Was is a sculpture by Consuelo Echeverria. It is a life size depiction of the incident made from forged steel auto parts.
• The 2001 book A Day for Vincent Chin and Me by Jacqueline Turner Banks is about a Japanese American child's efforts to slow down the traffic on a residential street in Kentucky, while his parents form a local protest in support of the Chin case.
• In 1998, a play based on the case, Cherylene Lee's Carry the Tiger to the Mountain, was performed at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. The West End Theatre in Manhattan performed the play in June 2007 as part of the first National Asian American Theater Festival.
• Chin is referenced in the Blue Scholars' song "Morning of America."
• Vincent Who? is a 2009 documentary film.

See also

• Yoshihiro Hattori
• Stereotypes of East Asians (history)
• Hate crime laws in the United States

References

1. ^ Henry Yee and the Estate of Vincent Chin (deceased) vs. Ronald Ebens, Michael Nitz, and Fancy Pants lounge, 83-309788 CZ (Mich 3rd Cir 1983).
2. ^ William Wei (2002-06-14). "An American Hate Crime: The Murder of Vincent Chin". Tolerance.org. Retrieved 2007-03-14.
3. Alethea Yip. "Remembering Vincent Chin". Asian Week. Retrieved 2007-03-14.
4. Bedi, Sheila (2003). "The Constructed Identities of Asian and African Americans: A Story of Two Races and the Criminal Justice System. Havard Blackletter Law Journal. 19, 181 – 199
5. Weingarten, Paul (July 31, 1983), "Deadly Encounter", Chicago Tribune
6. ^ Helen Zia (2000). Asian American Dreams. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. ISBN 0-374-14774-4.
7. ^ C.N. Le. "Asian-Nation: Anti-Asian Racism". Asian-Nation. Retrieved 2007-03-14.
8. Defendant's Requested Jury Instruction No. 30, U.S. v. Ebens
9. Defendant's Requested Jury Instruction No. 18, U.S. v. Ebens
10. Defendant's Requested Jury Instruction No. 31, U.S. v. Ebens
11. U.S. vs. Ebens transcript, Tuesday, June 19, 1984, p.209-211
12. US. v. Ebens, 800 F.2d 1422 (U.S. App. 6th Cir. 1986).
13. US. v. Ebens, 654 F. Supp. 144 (E.D. Mich. 1987).
14. Finkelstein, Jim (November 30, 1989), "The Man Convicted In Chin Case Pledges To Make Good On Debt", Detroit Free Press, pp. 1B{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
15. ^ Paul Dufault, Temporary Person Representative of the Estate of Vincent Jen Chin, Deceased, vs. Ronald M. Ebens, 97-727321-CZ (Mich 3rd Cir 1997).
16. 13300 Woodward, Detroit Cross-Index Directory 1984, 1987
17. Doron Levin. "Japan Bashing Out of Style, But Car Prejudice Persists". Bloomsbergy. Retrieved 2007-09-08.
18. Takaki, Ronald T. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian American. Boston: Little Brown, 1989.
19. United States House of Representatives. "Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 1997. Hearing". U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved 2007-03-14.
20. Frank H. Wu. "Asian Americans and the Perpetual Foreigner Syndrome". Retrieved 2007-06-14.
21. Iris Chang. The Chinese in America: A Narrative History. Viking, 2003. 0-670-03123-2. p. 320>
22. "OCA Mourns Death of Lily Chin". Organization of Chinese Americans. Retrieved 2007-03-14.
23. "Multicultural Studies: Who Killed Vincent Chin?". Filmakers Library. Retrieved 2007-03-14.
24. "Race and the Performing Arts". NPR Morning Edition. July 20, 1998. {{cite episode}}: External link in |title= (help)
25. "Carry the Tiger to the Mountain". National Asian American Theater Festival. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
26. Vincent Who? entry at Internet Movie Database

External links

• US v. Ebens appellate ruling
• American Citizens for Justice (ACJ) homepage
• AsianWeek article
• McMurder.com
• VincentChin.net
• Partial transcripts from Who Killed Vincent Chin?
• Asian American Dreams by Helen Zia (detailed account of the Vincent Chin case)
• Dr Frank H. Wu .Opening Lecture at The 5th Annual Conference in Citizenship Studies: Boundaries, March 27-29, 2008, Wayne State University

• 1955 births
• 1982 deaths
• Chinese Americans
• American murder victims
• Asian American issues
• Chinese American history
• Hate crimes
• History of Detroit, Michigan
• Racially motivated violence in the United States
• Adoptees
• People murdered in Michigan