Two men convicted in beating case

Thursday, February 10th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

CLAREMORE, Okla. (AP) -- A jury returned guilty verdicts against two white men Thursday in the beating of a black man outside an Oologah convenience store. Alan Lee Littler and Bill Fendley each received a 90-daysentence and a $1,000 fine for assault and battery and misdemeanor counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, a court clerk said.

The men were convicted of beating Ronald M. Cozart on July 21,1998. A third man charged in the case, Mark Warren, previously pleaded guilty to the charge. Cozart, his then-girlfriend and now-wife, Vonetta Carpenter, and her two children were driving north on U.S. 169 to their home in Parsons, Kan., when they encountered the three men.

According to testimony, the men yelled racial slurs, threw debris at Cozart's car and tried to run it off the road before Cozart stopped at the store to call police. Littler testified that Cozart challenged him to a fight in the convenience store parking lot. He said that Cozart had a piece of rebar and struck the first blow. "I was raised if you get hit first, then, by God, you have the right to defend yourself," Littler testified.

The two wrestled onto the car hood and fell to the ground, he said. That's when Warren appeared with a night stick, yelling, "Now you know what Rodney King feels like," cursing and calling Cozart a racial epithet, Littler said. Littler, however, said that the fight was not racially motivated.