Leaving the courthouse in Brooklyn a free man, Eric Jackson -Knight had clutched a red Bible. In a retrial, he had been acquitted of helping to set a supermarket fire that killed six firefighters and for which he had already served 10 years in prison. And now, he said, he felt as if he were "being born again." It was time to get out of New York City, he said, and away from the troubles that had dogged him here over the years.
That was Aug. 17. Early yesterday, on a desolate street in Brooklyn, trouble found him once again.
Mr. Jackson-Knight was arrested on charges that included possession of a gun and narcotics paraphernalia and assaulting a police officer.
The police said that shortly after 5 A.M. two officers in a patrol car in Coney Island spotted what looked like a gun butt poking out of a man's waistband on West 17th Street between Mermaid and Surf Avenues, a block of vacant lots and a rooming house. The man, the police said, was Mr. Jackson-Knight, 37, also known as Eric Jackson, when he uses his father's last name, and Eric Knight, when using the maiden name of his mother, who lives in Coney Island.
Robert G. Sullivan, a lawyer who successfully defended Mr. Jackson-Knight last month, was unavailable for comment yesterday. In the past, Mr. Sullivan has said previous arrests of his client have been the result of harassment by law-enforcement officials determined to see Mr. Jackson-Knight arrested after the original conviction in the Waldbaum's fire case was thrown out.
The officers reported that when they called him over to the patrol car, he ran away. A police spokeswoman, Detective Mary Ann Mullin, said Officer Richard Garcia chased him on foot while Officer Michael Sammon followed in the car.
Detective Mullin said Officer Garcia caught up with the suspect as he was climbing a fence and when the officer grabbed at the suspect, he was kicked in the head and face. The officer was treated at Coney Island Hospital for bruises and released.
The officers said that when they arrested Mr. Jackson-Knight, they found a .44-caliber revolver and the stem from a crack pipe on him.
For the last month, his lawyer has been planning a multimillion-dollar lawsuit claiming wrongful imprisonment in the Waldbaum's case.
The Waldbaum's fire occurred on Aug. 2, 1978. Mr. Jackson-Knight was already in jail for a burglary conviction when indicted on arson and murder charges in the case a year later. The authorities said he confessed to setting the fire, but the defense said his confession had been coerced.
He was convicted after trial in 1980 and sentenced to the maximum of 25 years to life. But in 1988 Mr. Sullivan, who grew familiar with the case while representing the families of the dead firefighters in a civil suit against Waldbaum, got the original conviction thrown out. A judge called for a retrial, ruling that prosecutors had improperly withheld material that would have helped the defense.
After 1988, Mr. Jackson-Knight was arrested several times on charges including assault, theft and rape. Most cases were dismissed and the rape charge was reduced.
In 1993, Mr. Jackson-Knight was tried on charges that he raped and murdered a pregnant, homeless woman in Coney Island in 1991, but he was acquitted of all charges. In the summer of 1993, he was arrested on charges of assault and attempted car theft, to which he pleaded guilty. He served about a year in prison.
After his acquittal last month, he said he had received a college education in prison, grown more religious and wanted to start a new life, possibly down South, where relatives lived. In the interim, he moved into an apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant. And then he was arrested.
