Jury in Lawrence King Killing To Be Drawn From Santa Barbara County

Today comes news that the judge in the Brandon McInerney trial has decided not to move the venue of the trial but he will have jury selection drawn from Santa Barbara County.

McInerney had just turned 14 when he allegedly shot King execution-style in a computer class in February 2008. Student witnesses said the effeminate King had expressed a romantic interest in McInerney, who was humiliated by the attention. The boys had verbally sparred in the days before the shooting.

The case has garnered international attention from gay and lesbian groups, who see King as a victim of homophobia. McInerney’s defenders say that school officials and the boys’ parents should have done more to quell tensions between them.

McInerney is being tried as an adult on a first-degree murder charge with a hate crime enhancement and could face 53 years to life if convicted.

MadProfessah has been following the case very closely since February 2008 when the incident first happened. I agree with the decision to try McInerney as an adult but I do not support the death penalty (for any crime).

Brandon McInerney Pleads Not Guilty To Hate Crime

Brandon McInerney, the teenager who shot and killed an openly gay classmate in February 2008, has pleaded "not guilty" to murder. The 15-year-old is being tried as an adult.

Ventura County Superior Court Superior Court Judge Bruce Young set a pretrial hearing for Oct. 23 and a trial date for Dec. 1.

[...]

McInerney’s lawyers, Scott Wippert and Robyn Bramson, filed a legal motion Thursday to dismiss the special circumstance of lying in wait that was tacked onto the felony criminal charges by prosecutors after a three-day preliminary hearing.

Attaching a lying in wait special circumstance to a murder charge in a juvenile case, by law, automatically transfers the case to adult court.

[...]

McInerney is accused of murder and a hate crime in the killing of King, who wore female clothing to school and told classmates he was gay. Prosecutors allege McInerney waited 15 to 20 minutes in a classroom before shooting King, constituting grounds for adding the lying-in-wait charge.

McInerney faces as much as 53 years to life in prison if convicted of all charges in adult court. Prosecutors have offered to agree to a sentence of 25 years to life if he pleads guilty to first-degree murder and the hate-crime allegation.

Prosecutors allege McInerney, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, subscribed to a white-supremacist philosophy.

Hat/tip Joe.My.God

15-Year-Old Killer of Lawrence King To Be Tried As Adult

Brandon McInerney, the person who (allegedly) shot 15-year old Lawrence King in their 8th grade class in February 2008 is going to be tried for the crime as an adult, a judge ruled on Wednesday at a preliminary hearing. The court proceedings were delayed from earlier this year when McInerney's father was found dead the day before the trial was supposed to start.

According to prosecutor Maeve Fox, McInerney faces up to 53 years in prison, if convicted.

The prosecutor has offered McInerney a plea of a reduced sentence of 25 years if he pleads guilty. McInerney's defense attorneys have said they will appeal the judge's ruling that the now-15-year-old should be tried as an adult for a crime he allegedly committed days after he turned 14.

The defense has also been criticized by LGBT organizations for attempting to use a form of the "gay panic" defense for McInerney's actions:

In the preliminary hearing, the defense suggested that McInerney had been sexually abused as a child. They said he felt threatened by King, who returned taunts from him and other boys with sexual overtures and declarations of love.

At Wednesday's hearing, McInerney attorney Robyn Bramson summed up the defense strategy. In exasperation, she asked an investigator: "What if you talked to Brandon and he said, 'I did it because this kid was sexually harassing me and I felt panicked, freaked out and uncomfortable'?"

The judge ruled the question improper, and the investigator did not have to answer.

If that's not an attempt to get "gay panic defense" admitted, then what is it?

The judge also ruled that the special circumstance of "lying in wait" be added to the charges because the crime occurred 15 to 20 minutes in to a computer class on the morning of February 12, 2008. He also agreed that the crime should be classified as a hate crime.

Lawrence King's Killer Will Stand Trial

Rod 2.0 reported last week while I was in the middle of preparing for finals and not reading the paper that the teenaged killer of gay teen Lawrence King has been ruled competent for trial. 14-year-old Brandon McInerney (pictured here) fatally shot 15-year-old King at point blank range in the head during an 8am class at a middle school in Oxnard in February 2008.

The incident became a cause celebre and there was a controversial Newsweek magazine cover story on Lawrence King which portrayed the murdered boy as "confused" and even called him a bully for wearing make-up and high-heels to class. Clearly, both teens were troubled(Lawrence had been living at home for abused kids and Brandon's parents had multiple run-ins with the police and documented substance abuse problems) but the reason why the case became so famous (and why bloggers like MadProfessah, Joe.my.god and Rod 2.0 arefollowing it so closely) is the visuals of one fourteen-year-old boy shooting another boy in the head because one boy was ashamed that the murdered boy had said he had a crush on the other boy.