Brandon McInerney Trial Jurors Talk about the Case: MyFoxLA.com
On October 5th prosecutors will decide whether or not to retry Brandon McInerney for shooting Lawrence King twice in the back of the head with a .22-caliber handgun as 24 classmates watched on. The kicker—two of the first trial jurors say that emotions ran so high during deliberations that an LA-based FOX anchorwoman concludes that finding a 12-person jury to convict McInerney of first-degree murder rather than manslaughter will be difficult. It also turns out more jurors in the first trial wanted manslaughter over murder.
One juror says everyone feels upset that they didn’t get any closure on this case. Yeah, you and the rest of us, honey.
sam
How?! HOW?! How can this POSSIBLY be manslaughter???
Cam
@sam:
Just listen to some of the rightwingers. It isn’t murder because they think gays aren’t real people.
toyotabedzrock
He must be tried as a youth!
If you want justice that is the solution. You will not be given closure by taking an eye for an eye.
Michael
So a straight guy can take a can and “manslaughter” a gay man?
WTF?
You just gotta love America. One almost hopes the GOP wins the 2012 presidential race because God knows that will seal the fate of America.
Michael
Umma, that’d be “take a gun”
ewe
Gee, i think shooting someone in the back of the head is murder but that’s just me i guess. Unsuspecting Lawrence King has the back of his shot with a fucking gun is murder. Bringing the gun from home all the way to school is premeditated.
ewe
What can be expected when war criminal and old white man Dick Cheney defiantly goes around pushing a book with his daughter speaking proudly around the fact he is guilty of crimes against humanity?
Cinesnatch
What’s with those outfits?
Mike in Asheville
@sam: @Michael: It can, and I believe it should be, labeled as manslaughter when the culprit is a child.
Under California law, juveniles are subject to confinement until their 25th birthday. Perhaps that should be changed to a maximum of 12 years or 30th birthday. That is a different matter.
Had the DA sought to try this culprit as the juvenile he is, tried by a judge in juvenile court, the sentence would have been the maximum, 10-11 years, until he turned 25.
To me, this has nothing to do with whether the victim was gay or straight; it has everything to do with charging children as adults. Certainly children know the difference between right and wrong, nonetheless, our society does not believe that they are capable of military service, driving cars (until 16 or 17), voting, drinking, entering into contracts, unlimited employment, etc. If a child is unable to be mature enough to make those decisions, how can a child be held to adult criminal standards?
The jury CLEARLY determined that this culprit was guilty of the death of the victim — 7 for manslaughter and 5 for murder. He has been in confinement since the killing. Get him to juvenile court and complete the confinement until 25.
Lastly, even the family of the victim sought to have the culprit tried as a juvenile in juvenile court.
the crustybastard
@sam:
That crime is no more manslaughter than it is securities fraud.
Those assholes just don’t want to admit it’s murder because they believe the aggressively gay dusky outsider deserved it for provoking the popular hard-luck white kid.
“Boys make bad decisions” explains Larry being on probation for theft and vandalism. It doesn’t begin to explain why Brandon carefully planned and willfully carry out an execution-style premeditated murder.
I’d bet my house both those women were just OUTRAGED over the OJ verdict, too.
David Ehrenstein
Keep straight women off of juries.
Mr. Enemabag Jones
Like I wrote before, if this had been a black and white situation, black Americans would be rioting in the streets. We just sit back and debate the age of the killer.
Hets aren’t content to attack queer adults, they’re going after our kids now. When will we rise up and fight?
delurker
Yeah, it is. In the post regarding news of the hung jury, you had gays here posting he should be acquitted because he’s “a cute little white boy.” Ugh. What hope is there for justice for Larry?
Mav
“Hets aren’t content to attack queer adults, they’re going after our kids now. When will we rise up and fight?”
^ This.
Maybe when it’s the bullied gay kids who start toting handguns to school to deal out a little schoolyard justice, we’ll be reading a slightly different news story.
Mike
While I’ll admit to struggling with the juvenile/adult question in my own mind, did those two ladies seriously say that it would be a “tragedy” for this case to be retried at all? They think the prosecution should just drop it completely?
Mr. Enemabag Jones
@Mav:
Maybe when it’s the bullied gay kids who start toting handguns to school to deal out a little schoolyard justice, we’ll be reading a slightly different news story.
Yep.
I wonder how many of those jurors would have had a problem with putting Lawrence King in jail for murder, if he had shot McInerney?
Mr. Enemabag Jones
@Mike:
I didn’t watch the video, but reading the transcript, those two people don’t give a shit about Lawrence King. All they seem to care about is that “poor boy” McInerney.
Clearly in America today it’s better to be a living neo-Nazi, anti-gay killer, than a dead queer kid.
Little Kiwi
the reality is that if McInernery were black, and King white, he’d have been found guilty. Years ago. And given the maximum sentence.
What we have here is a white Christian boy with a military-vet older brother (who’s obsessed with Nazis, natch) who murdered a gay gender-nonconformist brown boy. The poor old white jurors can’t figure out which “crime” is worse.
Talking about killing him. Getting a gun. Loading the gun. Concealing the gun and sneaking it into school. Unloading the gun into the back of his head.
yeah. that wasn’t premeditated at all.
but remember – this a country whose legal system allowed Dan White to load a gun, sneak into city hall so as to avoid the metal detectors, shoot mayor moscone, walk down a hallway, reload his gun (from the ten extra rounds of ammo he has in his pocket) and open fire on Harvey Milk and still serve less than 7 years in prison.
a country that in the early 1980s let an all-white jury acquit a group of Good Old White Boys, Klan members no less, who literally lynched a young black man.
oh yeah. the jury just couldn’t figure out if they were guilty or not….
McInerney has been made into a monster – failed by family, society, a school system that ignored the bullying issue, and a culture here that utterly glorifies violence. Zero capacity to comprehend cause and effect. He needs years of rehabilitation. years of study to figure out what the fuck drives a human being to be like this. But that doesn’t mean we struggle to find out what kind of crime this was. We know what kind of crime this was. And he’s guilty.
J
@Little Kiwi: That last paragraph is golden. The culprits age has nothing to do with the crime he commits, manslaughter has been high jacked and has became the “we know he’s guilty but don’t want to convict him according the the laws we try anyone we are indifferent to/don’t like” verdict. Clearly if the little gay kid had pulled the trigger we’d have a different verdict on our hands.
Chad
They are asking the wrong people to sit on the jury. Get 12 gay people to sit on the jury and I can assure you a guilty of murder verdict. Who cares how old he is. He is old enough to know what killing is.
And to the person who asked what is it going to take. Well we gays sitting around singing we are the world like some kind of hippie love fest isnt going to cut it. We sit back and let them kill, beat take away rights and what do we do? Maybe if we took a lesson from stonewall and actually stood up for ourselves something might change…..
Now let’s hold hands and sing Judy Garland songs until the problem goes away.
Mr. Enemabag Jones
@Little Kiwi:
Good points all around. What I find absurd is they are using McInerney’s family life as an excuse for what he did, and Lawrence King’s family life as the reason why this happened. Nothing is McInerney’s fault, and everything is Lawrence King’s fault. And people wonder why I hate the great majority of straight people.
Gii
@David Ehrenstein: Why, are we all prejudiced, or homophobic? Or does some thing about being both straight and female make us unable to form unbiased opinions based on evidence and testimonies given in a courtroom?
Seriously, I’d really like an honest answer and explanation to your comment.
Ray
Those stupid cunts make me sick. It is obvious the dead kid was secondary to the poor hurt feelings of the murderer for them.
Ray
@toyotabedzrock: Those stupid cunts make me sick. It is obvious the dead kid was secondary to the poor hurt feelings of the murderer for them.
Fuck that. Put the little bastard up against a wall and shoot him on the face twice. That’s the only real way to get justice in this case. And yes I would gladly pull the trigger myself if Larry’s family doesn’t call dibs.
B
No. 10 · the crustybastard wrote, “@sam: That crime is no more manslaughter than it is securities fraud.”
http://www.enotes.com/forensic-science/murder-vs-manslaughter has a discussion of the technical differences between a murder and voluntary manslaughter (both refer to killing someone on purpose).
Manslaughter (as opposed to murder) requires that “a person must have committed a homicide, but have acted in the “heat of passion.” This mental state must have been caused by legally sufficient provocation that would cause a reasonable person of ordinary temperament to lose self-control. To convict a person of manslaughter, it must be proved that the person who committed the homicide had adequate provocation (this cannot involve words alone), acted in the heat of passion, and lacked the opportunity to cool that passion.”
So, the discussion should really be about whether those conditions are met in this case (otherwise a charge of murder would apply). Another question is how the standard, “a reasonable person of ordinary temperament,” applies to a defendant who was 14 years old when the crime was committed, an age where most are a bit unreasonable. The outcome seems to show that the jury had trouble with determining that.
Given that 5 jurors wanted a murder conviction and 7 wanted voluntary manslaughter, the prosecution is unlikely to win without some changes, either a reduced charge or moving the case to juvenile court as the most likely alternatives.
Phil
“They are asking the wrong people to sit on the jury. Get 12 gay people to sit on the jury and I can assure you a guilty of murder verdict.”
Similarly, a jury of 12 klan members would never convict another klan member of murder and a jury of 12 black South Africans would never convict another black South African of nepotism and corruption. Biases and strong emotional connections cloud reasonable deliberation. I can see why the issue is polarizing as it is but some of you sound as nasty as the people you claim of evil.
Patsy Stoned
This sick, twisted, murdering little shit will walk thanks to useless and horribly dressed white-trash skanks like those two. His “life is over?” Hardly. ONE life is over and Brandon caused it. Meanwhile he continues to live…at taxpayer expense, no less.
I agree fully with everyone who says if the roles were reversed and the non-white boy shot “poor, innocent” neo-nazi fuckhead then the non-white boy would’ve been quickly tried as an adult for life. Yes Phil, biases DO cloud reasonable deliberation, and these two modern day Peg Bundys prove that clearly.
Mike
“our society does not believe that they are capable of military service, driving cars (until 16 or 17), voting, drinking, entering into contracts, unlimited employment, etc.”
Finding a gun, loading it, transporting it and using it are not decisions that are equal to deciding for whom to vote, whether or not to take a drink, or entering into a contract. Even a juvenile knows that the person will be dead after using a gun.
the crustybastard
@B:
Thanks for the criminal law refresher. It was entertaining.
However, the critical distinction between murder and manslaughter is that murders are planned and manslaughters are not.
Brandon McInerney told Larry’s friends to say goodbye to him the day before the murder. Then he slept on the idea. At some point he located a gun and bullets and packed them in his backpack. He secreted the gun inside the school, lay in wait for his victim, took a seat behind the victim, removed the gun from his backpack, shot Larry in the back of the head. Then shot him again.
Now tell me, professor: can you detect some amount of planning and premeditation in this act of homicide?
Troy
I can’t see how ANYONE could say that this was manslaughter. It was premeditated, he planned it, there was intent prior to it and he pulled it off! He even chose to sit behind his victim after packing a gun in his bookbag. This boy is a murderer, charge him as an adult!
Marlene
@Mr. Enemabag Jones: It’s unfortunate that you feel that way about us straight people though I can understand why on some level. This clearly is a case of premediated murder. Mcinerney is a monster – made so by his upbringing but a monster nonetheless. He is dangerous and he belongs in prison. The two women jurors were a poor choice and should not have been on that jury. They’re excusing this kid’s actions because of his age like he is some poor misguided youth. Age 14 is old enough to understand the consequences of his actions and he should be tried as an adult. And his defense attorney should be ashamed of himself for trying to paint this kid as a victim. He isn’t a victim he is a murderer.