Larry Nevers Dies: Convicted Detroit Cop in Brutal, 'Racial' 1992 Malice Green Beating and Death Dead at 72

Larry Nevers, one of the two Detroit cops convicted of second-degree murder in the fatal, brutal 1992 beating of African American "suspect" Malice Green, died in his sleep at the age of 72 on Sunday, Feb. 3, 2013. Back on November 5, 1992, police officers Nevers and Walter Budzyn were accused of beating Green to death with heavy police flashlights outside a crack house in Detroit when the suspect failed to relinquish a vial of crack cocaine. Although convicted, Nevers continued to voice his innocence, blaming the conviction on "racial politics." Reports from the Macomb County Medical Examiner's Office confirm that Nevers passed away on Sunday and that his body was released to family members later that day.

Detroit law enforcement officers Nevers and Budzyn were convicted of second-degree murder by a Wayne County prosecution team and a coroner's report by Dr. Kahlil Jiraki in 1993. The official cause of Green's death was ruled blunt force trauma after Nevers allegedly struck Green in the head with his flashlight approximately fourteen times after the suspect failed to relinquish a vial of cocaine during a routine traffic stop. A subsequent report presented at the trial by the officers' paid experts stated that Green died of heart failure, caused in part by an enlarged heart due to years of substance abuse, (which was then aggravated by the struggle with the two cops). Such "evidence" couldn't save the convicted officers after the prosecution presented several damaging eye-witness accounts.

The former police partners served a little over four years in a Texas federal prison before each won separate appeals. Budzyn was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in a retrial, but his first conviction satisfied the sentence. Nevers' retrial in 2000 found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter and ultimately sent him back to prison. He was finally released in May 2001.

Nevers continued to fight for his innocence the rest of his life... he released his book "Good Cops, Bad Verdict," in 2006, where he explained that racial politics caused his conviction. Nevers and Budzyn were white, while Green (an unemployed steel worker with a drug problem, according to his sister at-the-time) was black. Green's death came just a year after the Rodney King cop beating sparked racial riots in Los Angeles.

Nevers once wrote on his website www.larrynevers.com, "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 was on the cusp of retirement before the Green murder conviction.

Nevers is survived by his wife, Nancy Nevers.