20,000 Signatures Added to Protest in Grocer Case

Activists added 20,000 signatures of support Sunday to efforts to send to jail a Korean-born grocer convicted of killing a Los Angeles teen-ager.

The support was in the form of almost 20,000 signature cards displayed Sunday at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles and gathered throughout the city by the Committee for Justice, a group of 20 volunteers.

The committee chairman, Kerman Maddox, said the cards were intended to quantify public outrage over the suspended sentence of Soon Ja Du, the grocer who shot and killed 15-year-old Latasha Harlins in March after a dispute over a $1.79 bottle of orange juice.

“If you beat a puppy in Glendale, you go to jail,” Maddox said, referring to another recent court case. “You kill a black child who lives in South-Central Los Angeles and you get probation. . . . That’s unreasonable. It reminds me of a Jim Crow kind of justice that we thought had disappeared.”

Unlike some protests that have followed the trial, this campaign was not directed primarily at the Superior Court judge who imposed the suspended sentence. Since her controversial decision, Judge Joyce A. Karlin has become the target of recall efforts, but not from Maddox’s group.

“The only response we’re looking for is an appeal of the sentence,” said Maddox, a Cerritos College political science instructor who paid $1,200 to have the cards designed and printed. “Our efforts are designed to make the (political) system work for the African-American community,” he said. “We’re trying to make the system work for us, for once.”

Karlin gave Du a 10-year suspended prison sentence, along with five years of probation, a $500 fine and 400 hours of community service after Du was convicted of voluntary manslaughter. Karlin’s decision cited Du’s lack of a criminal record and noted that the gun had been altered to give it a “hairpin trigger.”

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner filed an appeal of the sentence Friday with the 2nd District Court of Appeal.