Larry Nevers, Convicted Cop, Dies

DETROIT (WWJ) - Former Detroit police officer, Larry Nevers, has died overnight at Henry Ford Macomb hospital

Nevers was well-known in metro Detroit and across as the country as the cop convicted with fellow officer Walter Budzyn in the beating death of suspect Malice Green in 1992. It came the year after the Rodney King cop beating sparked riots in Los Angeles.

Nevers was convicted of striking Green, who was holding a rock of crack cocaine, more than a dozen times in the head with his police-issued flashlight.

At the time, then Detroit mayor Coleman Young issued a statement saying, ""I am shocked and sickened."

Nevers wrote the mayor's reaction, as well as early condemnation from the chief and media, led to what he forever claimed was a wrongful conviction.

Nevers later penned the book "Good Cops, Bad Verdict," in 2006, where he wrote racial politics caused his conviction. Nevers and Budzyn were white, Green was black.

"The five main eye witnesses were all admitted drug addicts with criminal records.  Each had been arrested by Nevers in the past. They all therefore had a motive to lie," Nevers wrote on his website www.larrynevers.com.

He was on the cusp of retirement when Green was killed.