Though it’s only been eight weeks, it seems like the trial of Brandon McInerney, who stands accused of shooting and killing 15-year-old classmate Lawrence King, has been going on for an eternity.
And even as prosecutor Maeve Fox made her closing arguments yesterday, there’s been another lingering, dreadful feeling—that King, an admittedly troubled student with a penchant for cross-dressing, has been the one on trial.
The defense has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the jury to push the blame off their client: McInerney had gay panic; he was beaten and molested as a child; King was a disruptive element who taunted classmates at E.O. Green Junior High with gay innuendos; the school didn’t step in to resolve the issue.
But in her closing, Fox laid out the facts of the case—that McInerney told a friend he was was going to bring a gun to school and made good on his threat by pulling out a .22 during first period and shooting King twice in the back of the head—and dismissed any attempts to deflect guilt. “No amount of revisionist history and attempts to paint Larry King as some kind of predator can ever change the fact of what occurred in this case,” Fox stated, “That is: Larry King was executed for who he was.”
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Defense lawyer Scott Wippert began his closing argument on Thursday and is expected to conclude today. His team contends McInerney’s attack was a crime of passion, spurred by King announcing he wanted to change his first name to Latisha.
We’re sure McInerney will get some pretty interesting nicknames too while he’s rotting in prison.
Little Kiwi
I still worry about the cultural homophobia that indeed taints the jury system. let’s remember, this is a system wherein jurors found Dan White to have not “premeditated” his murders, despite the fact that the dude carried extra rounds, walked down a hallway and bloody reloaded before he killed his second victim.
Right. It’s King’s fault for embracing and owning the very things that were used against him by his tormenters. RRRRRRIGHT.
I don’t know how many other posters on this site were openly gay in school like King was, and indeed like I was, but the defense is insulting human decency and intellectual honesty with their pathetic “arguments.”
You get called a faggot every day. You’re taunted you’re bullied you’re demeaned. And then one day you just fucking OWN it. You toss it back, you emrbace the very things that they want to use against you. And that makes them angry.
Call me a faggot? I’ll blow your motherfucking ass a kiss and tell you to stop flirting with me.
Which I did, too.
Doesn’t make me the bully, nor the problem. I’m so fucking sick of our culture blaming people for fighting back. And fuck you in advance to the cowardly wimps who troll this who will blame King for his own death, simply because you’re still angry that proud, brave, courageous young gender-nonconformists like King are more man than you’ll ever be.
Read more: http://www.towleroad.com/2011/08/murderous-intent-gay-panic-arguments-vie-to-sway-jury-in-closing-hours-of-brandon-mcinerney-trial.html#ixzz1W9gRYcSH
adam
Defense lawyers try to try and slander the dead victim in murder cases all the time where the victim and offender knew each other and had some personal connection. It’s not special to LGBT victims. If he’d killed a girl his defense team would be trying to present arguments like he had been driven past reason by the girl being such a bitch and a whore, and the insinuation would be that the killer was acting in a natural, understandable way and the victim bears a lot of blame.
Little Kiwi
well said, Adam.
it’s apparently lawrence’s fault for being a gender-nonconformist homosexual. and it’s “ok” because gays should, what? “know their place?” fucking bollocks.
LandStander
@Little Kiwi: I think you missed the point of Adams post. He was not saying (I think) that he thinks its “ok because gays should learn their place”. He is saying that the defense team is doing what defense teams do. That is, trying to find a defense that will work. At no point in time did Adam say he agrees, he just said the defense team will try to insinuate, like they do in many cases, that what the killer did was “understandable”. Again, he is not saying it was understandable, he is saying the defense team is putting up the defense that it was understandable. Blah!
Little Kiwi
You’re right, I projected. There’s no way a girl would be blamed for a murder from “hitting on a guy”. it’s bollocks.
and let’s be real – if McInerney was black and King white then McInerney would have already been found guilty and given the maximum sentence.
Ryan B
@Adam
Well said, this fact is true of most criminal trials. But the sad fact that @Little Kiwi is right in their original post too, I easily see a jury could be swayed more toward the defense in cases of where the prosecution is arguing for a minority.. including homophobia, racial trials, etc.
natriley
This is an important case combining the personal and current political quarrels. McInerney, the young shooter, was in touch with extreme right wing groups. DA Fox clearly understood that King was learning to assert himself and his gay identity. What the defense called “making passes” were a young queens way of coping with hostility. King, the victim, had no love the shooter. King would cope by with McInerney’s anger by cooing at him. King had developed close friendships with a group of girls. He would go into the lunch room and sit at a table with boys who would look disgusted, get up, walk away, and then girls would join King and they would have the table to themselves. These were good faith adolescent games of identity and assertion.
McInerney tried to get his friends to beat up King, they refused. His behavior, especially the shooting, were not typical of the school or of the adolescents. King was in the eye of a storm, but he had friends and was holding his own. It is a shame that McInerney shot him ruining his own life and taking King’s life. I have faith the jury will sort it out.
BenFrankly
I am praying for a 50 yr prison sentence for this pos. And I would be doing the same thing if King had Killed Mcinerney. No one should be killed because of flirting or for unrequited love for that matter.
This premeditated murder should be punished to the fullest extent.
MattGMD
I was stunned to see the amount of sympathy and support for McInerney by writer Michael Mehas. Mehas wrote a book, ‘Stolen Boy’, and was involved in the making/writing of the movie ‘Alpha Dogs’ a few years ago. Mehas’ outpouring of sympathy and simultaneous chastising of the prosecutors in the McInerney case are good for a one or two point rise in the reader’s blood pressure. Granted his blogging posts are from 2009, but he has written and spoken re: McInerney since then as well. The blog posts were easier to read in chronoligical order and, to be fair, are well documented in re: prosecutor and defense motions, etc. To see how an articulate yet sycophantic writer tries to gin up sympathy for ‘McInerney: The Ventura County Sacrificial Lamb’, check out: http://www.stolenboy.com
ewe
This trial should have had national coverage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But it didn’t. Why? huh? Why the fuck not? Huh? Don’t even bother telling me why. I will just get more depressed about it. Nothing is going to happen to this cherub faced trailer turnaround.
ewe
oh. today is august 27, 2011. Does anyone know whether or not the Bummer has evolved yet?
ewe
May we never forget that Lawrence King would be alive today if not for Brandon McInerney. That should be the last statement made in closing.
David Ehrenstein
@natriley: I’d like to have faith. But don’t forget how a jury let Dan White walk.
natriley
@David Ehrenstein: And how many years ago was that? It was at the birth. No San Francisco jury would duplicate that verdict. Urban areas were polarized at that time. Today they try to smooth over relations with groups.
slanty
I think we can safely hope for a just verdict. May we praise Lord YHWH in hell below that the case didn’t take place in Florida.
the crustybastard
You should hope for a just verdict. But you shouldn’t count on one.
The defense has based its entire case on making common-cause with an entirely or overwhelmingly heterosexual jury.
Their argument is that McInerney was justifiably acting in self-defense against an unrelenting stream of homosexual harassment. They can’t explicitly say that, because it’s not an actual criminal defense. To use deadly force in self-defense, a person has to believe their life or limb is in genuine imminent jeopardy. Planning someone’s execution and plugging them in the back of the head doesn’t meet that criterion by any stretch.
So the defense is planting the idea in the heterosexual jury, “wouldn’t King’s obscene and offensive behavior provoke you, too?”
But that is not the question the jury needs to decide. One hopes the prosecution is able to keep the jury on task.
Queer Supremacist
Anything less than cruel and unusual punishment for this neo-Nazi cracker breeder goy is a miscarriage of justice.
Get ready for White Night Riots Redux.
Diego_Rivera_II
After this there should be a trial for the schoolmates and teacher who constantly encouraged King (in his makeup and flashy high heeled boots) to keep going after McInery, for their own amusement. They were bullies, they are guilty as well for the murder.
Diego_Rivera_II
@Queer Supremacist: I sure hope you meant to write “guy” and are not making an anti-gentile insult there.