In the 80s, New York’s East Village was again the locus of an art renaissance with a cadre of Warhol disciples creating a vibrant new scene in the louche dance clubs, abandoned buildings and on the streets. Keith Haring’s radiant child graffiti and Jean-Michel Basquiat’ SAMO public art was famous even before it was co-opted by galleries worldwide.
27 year old Michael Stewart, a graffiti artist/deejay/dancer fashion model was similarly poised for such success. But his life was brutally cut short by NYC transit police for allegedly graffitiing on a subway wall and allegedly resisting arrest.
Stewart was coming home from a date with his best friend and sometime girlfriend. While waiting for the subway, allegedly graffitiing, when he was confronted by a transit cop slammed against a wall handcuffed, pushed up the stairs to the street at Union Square where he was brutally knocked to the ground and surrounded by more officers. and in seconds hog-tied, beaten, and his airway cut off with a Billy club.
Stewart’s screams for help were heard seven stories up in a college apartment building, many watching the scene of his assault from their windows. One officer describing him as a rampaging unarmed graffiti artist, an emotionally disturbed person and “violent psycho.”
No physical evidence of his graffitiing- a spray can, art pen, or a photo of any graffiti image was ever produced by police. And how is it possible to resist arrest when one is cuffed from behind, shoved up a stairwell and surrounded by 6 officers on the street? Stewart remained in a coma for 13 days before dying of the injuries. His official cause of death was listed as a heart attack.
Elon Green’s The Man Nobody Killed investigates Stewart’s murder and attendant cover-ups that involved the Transit Police, NYPD, Bellevue Hospital pathologists, even the administrations of Mayor Koch and Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Stewart’s parents were being stonewalled from hospital officials and police about the extent of their son’s injuries and his treatment at the hospital. Instead of getting a full, coherent, plausible account of what happened to Stewart that night in the subway, on the stairs, on the street, in the police van, in the emergency room, there was concerted obfuscation from NYPD, Bellevue Hospital staff, and the doctor who performed his autopsy weeks later.
The total disregard to police procedures as well as malpractice by the doctors who first examined Stewart and the pathologist who consistent changed the medical records of the autopsy. Green exposes the systemic racial disparities in the justice system at every level. Basquiat commented that had he been caught making public art “this could have been me.” Haring said that he had been arrested several times graffitiing in the subway and because he was white he had never brutalized by the NYPD.
Meanwhile the art, theater and club communities kept the story in the news and held fundraisers for the Stewart family. Haring, Basquiat, and celebrities including Madonna brought public awareness about Stewart’s death. Spike Lee dedicated his film ‘Do The Right Thing’ to the Stewart family.
Green investigates all of the events and those who knew Stewart and jurors and officials connected to the case. He deconstructs the many ‘official versions’ of the attack and the contradicting medical records and testimonies of doctors and psychologists on the case.
A grand jury of 22 New Yorkers were assembled and over months hearing colliding versions of events. Stewart’s character being questioned or outright or sullied in the process.
The defense parsing out discrepancies in various testimonies, and the events turned into a litany of Rashomon-esque versions to dissembling the objective reality that Michael Stewart was hogtied on the ground by multiple cops one with a boot on his back and a night stick at his throat, cutting off his airway, then his body literally thrown in a police van and taken to Bellevue, where the inhumane treatment continued.
Green’s previous book, the Edgar Award winning ‘Last Call’ an account of the gruesome murders of gay men in New York in the 70s & 80s. Distinctive in his meticulous reporting the facts about the crimes, but with equal focus on the lives, careers, relationships and families of the victims. He brings the same sensibility to The Man No One Killed, with dimensional portraits of Stewart, his family, the citizens serving on the grand and trial juries and the testifying witnesses.
His mother and father in the courtroom, admitting later that early on they realized that there would be no justice brought for their son. Only three of the assailants were charged with Stewart’s, and all three former transit cops were acquitted.
