GUILTY CA - Lawrence 'Larry' King, 15, fatally shot at Oxnard school, 12 Feb 2008

  • #201

Hecht said there were many inconsistencies in the prosecution's theory that McInerney was a white supremacist. McInerney wouldn't have had friends who were minorities while singling out gays as a group to hate under the tenets of white supremacy, Hecht said.

(Emphasis added.) Hecht is a member of the defense team. If the above report were true, wouldn't it mean Hecht just admitted his client hated gays, which in turn would indicate the defendant's shooting of a gay victim was a hate crime?

I wonder if Hecht was ridiculing the prosecution's entire theory but not actually admitting that McInerney hated gays.
 
  • #202
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.O._Green_School_shooting

I had never read this before, Larrys life experiences were not good, taken from his biological family and adopted into another familt where his father may have been beating him, he really didn't have much of a good start in life and then was murdered at 14 before he could have grown up and hopefully had a happier life,
 
  • #204
http://www.vcreporter.com/cms/story/detail/so_many_questions/9087/

interesting read, one of the people commenting really caught my attention, wonder if what he posts is true,

I wonder, too.

Most of the other posts seem to indicate that the defense has won the battle of public opinion. Even posts superficially sympathetic to the victim now equate his alleged "harassment" with his killer's violence. As if both kids had somehow acted out in equally troubling ways.
 
  • #205
Larry walked onto the basketball court and interrupted the game and asked Brandon to be his valentine," said Hoagland.

Hoagland said McInerney was outraged by the comment as well as other encounters. He says McInerney told him about an incident as he was walking to a P.E. class.

" Brandon saw Larry coming, so he kind of walked to the far side of the passage area, and Larry then swerved over to him and said something to the effect of 'what's up baby' and there were other students around who heard it,"

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/ventura_county&id=8304243

I know this article is a couple days old but I'm curious. Do these comments constitute sexual advances or innuendo in the real world? I'm pretty sure that most every woman in the country has heard "Hey baby" at sometime in her life and with today's climate most boys probably have too. "Be my Valentine". These comments sound more like Larry was aware of Brendon's opinions and Larry was trying to get his goat. Teasing, not sexual harassment. And for this the defense has blamed Larry for his own death? For this some members of the general public agrees?

Please don't misunderstand I'm not condoning teasing and I'm certainly not condoning sexual harassment. But I cannot accept that people really believe such remarks should ever be retaliated against with physical violence, let alone murder.

I'm so glad I made the decision not to send my kids to the neighborhood schools. The older two would have gone to EO Green. If the attitude we have witnessed since this tragedy is any example, it is not a climate I would have tolerated for them.
 
  • #206
I would say that if this had been a regular "work place" the actions would have risen to the level of sexual-harassment. (This is just based on the facts that I have read here). This is especially since he made it clear the advances were unwelcome. Now, certainly that doesnt justify murder, but in the context of the hate crime charge, it does become relevant to the defense. This is part of why I really dislike hate crime legislation. It takes what should be a more straight forword prosecution and opens it up into a whole complicated mess. You go from just proving that he murdered this person, to having to prove that he killed him because he was gay. That in turn allowes (requires) the defense to show why the defendant was so bothered by the victim's behavior. In my opinion the victim has been put on trial here unnecessarily.

LCoastmom, I can understand your concerns about the school. They really really dropped the ball here.
 
  • #207
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  • #209
I would say that if this had been a regular "work place" the actions would have risen to the level of sexual-harassment. (This is just based on the facts that I have read here). This is especially since he made it clear the advances were unwelcome. Now, certainly that doesnt justify murder, but in the context of the hate crime charge, it does become relevant to the defense. This is part of why I really dislike hate crime legislation. It takes what should be a more straight forword prosecution and opens it up into a whole complicated mess. You go from just proving that he murdered this person, to having to prove that he killed him because he was gay. That in turn allowes (requires) the defense to show why the defendant was so bothered by the victim's behavior. In my opinion the victim has been put on trial here unnecessarily.

LCoastmom, I can understand your concerns about the school. They really really dropped the ball here.

With all due respect, I don't believe the hate crime enhancement prompted the homosexual panic defense. For one thing, such defenses were common for decades before anyone enacted hate crime legislation.

What the defense is doing in this case is attempting to prove that the defendant was under such extreme emotional distress because of the victim's conduct that the defendant is guilty of mere manslaughter instead of premeditated murder.

Such a distinction does indeed require a judge or jury to delve into the "messy" issue of the defendant's state of mind, but the murder/manslaughter difference is rooted in English common law and predates hate crime legislation by centuries.
 
  • #210
  • #211
Nova, I'm not saying the hate crime legislation created these defenses. Everything you say is absolutely correct. But certainly the existence of hate crime legislation, that requires proving more elements (very subjective elements), means that prosecutors come under political pressure to charge crimes as hate crimes. So what should be a simple assualt case, or straight forward murder, becomes something else. And something that effects a juror's mind entirely differently. You go from telling a juror that race or orientation or ethnicity doesnt matter to telling a juror that those very things DO matter.

I do agree with your statement about the judge. A homophobic judge would help them. But i think one of a couple things is happening. First, the defense is just protecting a potential appeal issue, and/or the statement by the judge wasnt meant in a derogatory manner at all and the defense is worried the judge will over compensate for it. They could also be thinking that if they can get a mistrial, the district attorney will not retry this as an adult case and move it to juvinile court and offer a plea.
 
  • #212
Thanks for the clarification, PW. I won't argue that the prosecutor didn't feel political pressure to overcharge here. (I'm on record from the outset that 14-year-olds should be tried in juvenile court.)

And I acknowledge the paradox that race/gender/sexual orientation doesn't matter except when it does.

But I know from personal experience (juror on a case where we had to choose between murder, manslaughter and acquittal) that "state of mind" is already an issue in murder trials.

And one of the purposes of hate-crime legislation is to make it clear in a case such as this that homophobia is not an acceptable mitigation factor against a charge of murder.

We'll see if it works.
 
  • #213
http://www.vcstar.com/news/2011/aug/19/defense-again-moves-for-a-mistrial-in-mcinerney/

you miss so much by not being able to watch the trial, from this article we get to see that the defendant was raised to hate gays, and said that Larry would have to pay for making comments to him, plus it seems the defendants father was concerned that he was looking at white supremacy websites

and the convoluted legal issues over the judge and defences allegations of bias,
 
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  • #216
http://www.vcstar.com/news/2011/aug/22/defense-rests-in-brandon-mcinerney-murder-trial/

glad to see the defence will be trying to rebut some of the states case

Or vice-versa...

The prosecution is calling one more rebuttal witness, a psychologist who is expected to refute testimony by a psychologist the defense put on the stand.

This means closing arguments in the trial could be heard in the next few days, and the jury would start deliberating shortly thereafter
 
  • #217
Or vice-versa...

The prosecution is calling one more rebuttal witness, a psychologist who is expected to refute testimony by a psychologist the defense put on the stand.

This means closing arguments in the trial could be heard in the next few days, and the jury would start deliberating shortly thereafter


big oops on my part, and too late to edit, I think case will be done by tomorrow, then closings, I think defence did a better job than state so am not overly optimistic for a guilty on murder charge
 
  • #218
I haven't been able to follow this as closely as I intended. I appreciate the links and commentary.

<<snipped>>
Fox's lone rebuttal witness, Kris Mohandie, a criminal psychologist who has studied school shootings and other violent acts, testified, countering what psychologist Donald Hoagland said for the defense last week.

The fact that McInerney was calm as he planned the shooting the night before and stole the gun from his grandfather's bedroom shows he was well aware of what he was going to do, he said.

He said McInerney had many of the symptoms of conduct disorder, which include acts of violence, bullying, cruelty to animals and fighting.

There are two kinds of violence, he said, predatory and affective. Predatorial is more akin to a proactive, planned act, like to a cat planning and stalking its prey. Affective is the instinctive reaction to an immediate threat, like a cat arching its back when it is threatened
 
  • #219
  • #220
Jury can consider manslaughter in McInerney trial; final arguments may begin Wednesday

CHATSWORTH &#8212; Jurors in the Brandon McInerney trial will be allowed to consider a voluntary manslaughter charge as well as murder when they deliberate his fate in the coming days, potentially allowing him to serve a much shorter sentence if convicted.

McInerney's mother and one of his lawyers wept as the judge said Tuesday that he was going to allow the manslaughter option.

http://www.vcstar.com/news/2011/aug/23/last-prosecution-witness-testifies-today-in/


________________________


I'm surprised it was 2nd degree murder instead of manslaughter as an alternative.
 

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