Update on Brandon McInerney Gay Hate Crime Trial

Gay Teen Murder Defendant's Brother Talks About Testimony: MyFoxLA.com

The murder trial of Brandon McInerney is continuing in Chatsworth and there have been some explosive testimony since last we checked in. 14-year-old McInerney, now 17, fatally shot his 15-year-old classmate Lawrence (Leticia) King twice in the head on February 12, 2008 when both boys attended E.O. Green Junior High School in Ventura County, California. McInerney is being tried as an adult (which I do not agree with) and is being charged with first-degree murder in a trial that began July 5, 2011.

The latest revelations are that Brandon McInerney was apparently repeatedly physically and sexually abused by his father.

Brandon McInerney was molested by a relative as a boy, a family secret that his older half brother didn't learn until two weeks after McInerney shot a gay classmate to death in February 2008, the half brother told jurors in a Chatsworth courtroom Wednesday.

James Bing testified that McInerney’s father cried hysterically as he revealed the molestation that occurred when Brandon was about 9 years old.

The older McInerney was upset because the family had dealt with the problem internally, sending the relative away for years, instead of reporting it to police and getting Brandon help, Bing told the courtroom.

McInerney’s father, who is now dead, believed the memory of the molestation was what caused his son to react so violently when Larry King began dressing like a girl and flirting with McInerney at their Oxnard junior high school, Bing said.

[...]

When McInerney’s father died in 2009, coroner's officials found alcohol and drugs in his system. Bing said his stepfather was frequently high on drugs and was sadistic.

He once put soap into a sock and beat the boys with it for an offense that later turned out to have been committed by someone else, Bing testified.

Billy McInerney poured Tabasco sauce down's the boys' throats when they were sleeping and would pull down their pants in front of their friends, disparaging the size of their genitals, Bing said.

"He was a mean, nasty person,'' Bing said.

How convenient that the alleged sexual molestation was never reported to anyone else outside the family so it will be different to corroborate. James Bing is Brandon McInerney's half-brother (same father different mother) and is the person speaking in the video given at the top of this post. If I were a juror I would take the testimony of a family member of the accused with more than a grain of salt.

What would you b willing to tell the court if a member of your extended family was accused of a crime for which they faced 53 years to life in prison if found guilty?

CNN Covers Larry King/Brandon McInerney Trial

Hat/tip to Rod 2.0.

Larry King Murder Trial Opens With Anti-Gay Arguments

The long-awaited trial of Brandon McInerney for the February 2008 execution-style murder of Lawrence King opened on July 5th with the prosecution and defense painting very different pictures of the two teenagers involved.

The los Angeles Times is covering the trial (quite well) and started by summarizing prosecutor Maeve Fox's opening statement.

Fox, a veteran Ventura County prosecutor, led the jury through a 90-minute outline of the case, starting by flashing a large photograph of a cherubic-faced King on a projector. She next showed the defendant's booking photos, portraying a tall and muscular McInerney with shaved head, taken within hours of the killing.

McInerney was angry with King, she said, because King had decided he was no longer going to take the bullying that he had been subjected to for years. Slight and "very effeminate," King had only girls for friends and was shunned by the boys, Fox said.

But after King was removed from his home and placed into a children's shelter, he underwent a change in attitude, the prosecutor said. He became more confident in school and started wearing high-heeled boots, makeup and jewelry along with his uniform. School rules did not prohibit this.

King knew it was within his rights to assert a budding feminine identity, and he took full advantage, she said.

"Larry King for the first time in his life wasn't taking it anymore," Fox said. "He started to give people what I prefer to call the proverbial chin, only it was more profane."

The defense attorney is Scott Wippert who has already been held in contempt by the judge for mentioning McInerney's statements to police that Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charles Campbell had previously ruled would not be heard by the jury.

Wippert's 30-minute opening statement focused on both of the boys' troubled backgrounds and on McInerney's inability to deal with the humiliation of having an openly gay boy flirt with him at school. In contrast to the district attorney's slide show presentation, Wippert simply stood before the jury and talked, occasionally consulting his notes.

McInerney reached an "emotional breaking point" and saw no other way to stop the sexual harassment by King, Wippert said. His own violent and dysfunctional family offered no help, and school officials had made it clear that King was permitted to flaunt his sexuality, even if it was disruptive, the defense attorney said.

He called the prosecution's allegation that McInerney was acting out of white supremacist beliefs a red herring. He said that the Nazi iconography and copies of Hitler's speeches found in the boy's room were related to his work on a World War II paper.

There was no hate crime, just the frustration of an adolescent with nowhere to turn, he told the jury. "Why would a student complain when everyone knows about it and no one is going to do anything about it?" he posited.

Wippert suggested that a psychologist will testify that McInerney was in a dissociative state at the time of the shooting, not in touch with the reality of what he was doing. He also told the jury there is evidence that King had been making inappropriate sexual comments at school since the fifth grade.

"He did shoot Larry King," Wippert said of his client. "He did this out of a heat of passion, and that is voluntary manslaughter."

MadProfessah has been following this case very closely for years. Involuntary manslaughter would be a travesty of a result. I am a strong opponent of the death penalty and also do not approve of trying 14-year-olds as adults but since California passed Proposition 21 passed allowing the practice McInerney should be tried to the fullest extent of the law. There is no question McInerney executed Larry King (with a gun, no less!), and that the boy's sexual orientation and gender identity was involved in Mcinerney's decision to end Larry King's life.

Jury Selection In Gay Teen Murder Trial Begins

On February 12, 2008 teenager Brandon Mcinerney shot fellow teenager Lawrence King in the back of the head during an early morning class at E.O. Green Elementary School in Oxnard. Now, more than three years later a jury is being selected in the murder trial, as the defense has rejected all plea deals.

The Ventury County Star reports:

Defense attorney Scott Wippert said the plea bargain was "absurd and very far from the truth," and that his client is guilty of voluntary manslaughter and not premeditated first or second degree murder.

Wippert said the chance his client would get paroled whether he served 25 or 53 years is slim to none.

"The plea offer they are making is very illusory," Wippert said. "They are trying to convince the public by making such an offer that they are looking out for Brandon and they are giving him a chance. If they wanted to give him a chance, they would give him a determinant offer."

Wippert said his client was pushed by a tumultuous home life and constant sexual harassment from King.

"These were two very troubled young men," Wippert said of his client and King. "That doesn't justify what (Brandon) did, but it explains how distraught he was when the constant harassment occurred at the school and the overall anguish in his life that led to this horrific act. That is what created the heat of passion in his mind. He committed a horrific act, but outside of that, he is a really good kid." 

Amazing. Somehow Lawrence King is going to be made into the aggressor, even though Brandon went home and got his dad's gun and put a bullet in the brain of a classmate, in front of 25 other students and the teacher. I understand the defense wants to make this case about King's actions and not Mcinerney's, but surely there are some places even a defense attorney won't go? We'll see.

The LGBT community will be watching this case very, very closely.