[11] The incident sparked a nationwide debate on crime in major U.S. cities, the legal limits of self-defense, and the extent to which the citizenry could rely on the police to secure their safety.

[12] In the early afternoon of December 22, 1984, four youths from the Bronx—19-year-olds Barry Allen, Troy Canty, and Darrell Cabey, and 18-year-old James Ramseur—boarded a downtown 2 train (a Broadway–Seventh Avenue express).

[8][20] In 1986, the NY Court of Appeals concluded from grand jury evidence that Goetz pulled a handgun and fired four shots at the four youths, initially striking three of them.

[27][28][16]: 10 [29] While growing up, Goetz lived with his parents and three older siblings in Upstate New York, where his father ran a dairy farm and a bookbinding business.

[33][34] Friedman's account was excluded from the criminal jury trial,[35]: 472  but in a subsequent civil action, Goetz admitted to having used both epithets at a neighborhood meeting.

[36] After the shooting, Goetz took a cab back to his 14th Street home before renting a car and driving north to Bennington, Vermont; he then burned the distinctive blue jacket he had been wearing and scattered the pieces of his gun in the woods.

[37] On December 26, an anonymous hotline caller told New York City police that Goetz matched the gunman's description, owned a gun, and had been assaulted previously.

[38][39] On December 29, Goetz called his neighbor, Myra Friedman, who told him that police had come by his apartment looking for him and had left notes asking to be contacted as soon as possible.

[39] Shortly after noon the next day, he walked into the Concord, New Hampshire police headquarters and told the officer on duty, "I am the person they are seeking in New York.

[46] Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau asked a grand jury to indict Goetz on four counts of attempted murder, four of assault, four of reckless endangerment, and one of criminal possession of a weapon.

[47][48][49] On January 25, the grand jury refused to indict Goetz on the more serious charges, voting indictments only for unlawful gun possession—one count of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, for carrying in public the loaded unlicensed gun used in the subway shooting, and two counts of possession in the fourth degree, for keeping two other unlicensed handguns in his home.

[52] Judge Crane dismissed the charges on two grounds: First, he held that the prosecutor had erred when instructing the grand jury that, for Goetz's actions to be protected by New York's self-defense statute, they would have to be objectively reasonable.

[55]: 304 [42] Additionally, the court held that Judge Crane's perjury finding was "speculat[ive]" and "particularly inappropriate": "[A]ll that has come to light is hearsay evidence that conflicts with part of Canty's testimony.

There is no statute or controlling case law requiring dismissal of an indictment merely because, months later, the prosecutor becomes aware of some information which may lead to the defendant's acquittal.

Goetz conceded that he had shot the four youths, but he asserted that his actions were justified by section 35.15(2) of New York's justification statute, which, with non-relevant exceptions, permitted the use of deadly force when actor "reasonably believes that such other person is using or about to use deadly physical force ... or ... is committing or attempting to commit a kidnapping, forcible rape, forcible sodomy or robbery".

[37] The defense called police officer Peter Smith, who testified that, after he arrived on the scene, Canty had told him that the group was planning to rob Goetz.

[63] For the defense, Dominick DiMaio, Suffolk County's former medical examiner, testified that Allen, Canty, Cabey, and Ramseur had been standing in a semi-circle around Goetz when he opened fire.

[82]: 902 n.159  Stephen Somerstein, one of Cabey's attorneys, expressed some optimism that a portion of any book deal Goetz signed could contribute to the judgment.

"[84] Asked in 2004 whether he was making payments on the judgment, Goetz responded "I don't think I've paid a penny on that", and referred any questions on the subject to his attorney.

[98] Questions of what impact race had on Goetz's thinking, the public's reaction, and the verdict by the (predominately White) criminal jury became hotly debated.

[99]: 49 [100] The Los Angeles Times reported that, during the criminal trial, demonstrators outside the courtroom chanted "Bernhard Goetz, you can't hide; we charge you with genocide.

[92] The Guardian Angels, a volunteer patrol group of mostly Black and Hispanic teenagers,[107] collected thousands of dollars from subway riders toward a legal defense fund for Goetz.

[108] CORE's director, Roy Innis (who had lost two of his sons to inner-city gun violence and would later be elected to the executive board of the NRA[109][110]), offered to raise defense money, saying that Goetz was "the avenger for all of us".

[78] Harvard Professor of Government James Q. Wilson explained the broad sentiment by saying, "It may simply indicate that there are no more liberals on the crime and law-and-order issue in New York City, because they've all been mugged.

The tragedy is that a public eager to identify transgressors in advance decided from the start that Mr. Goetz was a hero and that his black victims deserved what they got.

"[112]: 887  As to the criminal verdict, Benjamin Hooks, director of the NAACP, called the outcome "inexcusable," adding, "It was proven—according to his own statements—that Goetz did the shooting and went far beyond the realm of self-defense.

"[113] United States Attorney Rudolph Giuliani met with black political and religious leaders calling for a Federal civil-rights investigation.

"[115][116] In a 2007 interview with Stone Phillips of Dateline NBC, Goetz admitted that his fear may have been enhanced due to the fact that the four men he shot were black.

[133] In 2023, African-American civil rights leader Al Sharpton and former assistant district attorney Mark Bederow compared the Goetz case to the killing of Jordan Neely.

[137][138] Todd Phillips, who wrote, produced and directed the film, grew up in New York City and remembered the 1984 subway shooting from his youth.