New Trial Is Ordered In a Noted '75 Killing

By WILLIAM GLABERSON


PITTSBURGH — Robert Wideman's part in a 1975 killing might have been forgotten by now except by the family of a 24-year-old man who was shot in the back on a November night.

Instead, the crime became one of the enduring literary images of black America, as a subject of an acclaimed 1984 book, ''Brothers & Keepers,'' by Mr. Wideman's brother, John Edgar Wideman.

One brother, the author, had escaped the ghetto, the other was the street tough who embodied the cycle that claims many young black men. At 25, Robert Wideman was imprisoned for life without parole after an accomplice fired a fatal shot in a failed street swindle.

And Robert Wideman's case is no longer alive only in literature. Surprisingly, it is alive again in the courts, not only reopening old wounds here but also altering a story that has been portrayed around the world as representative of the fate of black men in America.

In November, Judge James R. McGregor of Allegheny County Common Pleas Court ordered a new trial for Mr. Wideman, who has been in prison for 23 years. A second chance is warranted, the judge ruled, because new evidence showed that the victim would not have died if he had received proper medical care after an ambulance took him to a hospital.