a050  0436  18 Mar 87
PM-AIDS Defense,0478
Defense Attorney Claims Man Felt He Had Been 'Sentenced To Death'
By LAWRENCE NEUMEISTER
Associated Press Writer
    MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) - A man on trial for murdering another man after
they had sex was enraged by learning too late that his homosexual
friend had AIDS, the defendant's attorney said.
    ''Who had the intent to murder here?'' the lawyer, John R. Lewis,
asked a Nassau County Court jury Tuesday at the opening of the trial
of Lorenzo D. Owens, 20, of New York.
    Lewis said his client, a homeless man with a 10th grade education,
felt sentenced to death as a result of a deliberate action by Kenneth
Grice, 22, of Hempstead.
    Representatives of gay rights groups have said they worry that if
Owens is acquitted it will increase hysteria about acquired immune
deficiency syndrome and encourage irrational behavior.
    Assistant District Attorney William Dempsey told the jury Owens
admitted to authorities that he had crayoned on Grice's bathroom
mirror: ''We hate homosexuals. Move out.''
    Demsey cited a videotaped confession in which Owens told a
prosecutor he became ''enraged'' and a ''zombie'' when Grice, his
friend and sex partner, told him he had AIDS on April 20. So he got a
knife and slit Grice's throat in the victim's home, Owens said.
    In his opening argument, Lewis said, ''Evidence will show Mr. Grice
engaged in behavior which could well mean the man sitting before you
is going to die of AIDS.
    ''We ask you to bring your common sense in the trial and ask, 'Did
this young man murder anybody or was he in fact murdered?'' Lewis
said. ''The evidence will show that he felt he had been sentenced to
death.''
    According to the videotape, viewed by a reporter before trial, Owens
said Grice enticed him to have sex, saying, ''I'm in the mood for
you.''
    After sex, Grice told Owens he had AIDS, the defendant said.
    ''The next thing you know, I just bust out in a rage,'' Owens
confessed, adding that he became like a ''zombie.''
    Dempsey raised the possibility of the jury considering a lesser
charge of manslaughter when he told the jurors, ''The only question
is what degree of homicide is Mr. Owens charged with.''
    Lewis called the videotape, in which a calm Owens changes into a
sweating, nervous and stuttering man as he describes his outrage at
being told he could get AIDS ''the nub of this whole case.''
    Lewis said he will prove that Grice knew he had AIDS because that is
the reason he was discharged from military service.
    Owens, who tested negative for AIDS shortly after his arrest but
could still develop the disease, ''still feels he has very few years
to live,'' Lewis said outside the coutroom.
    ''He doesn't understand what he did wrong,'' he said of his client,
who has a 10th-grade education. ''He feels like he's a dead man.''
    
AP-NY-03-18-87 0722EST
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