Trial to Begin in Lawrence King Murder

[Shana A]

Posted on Advocate.com July 05, 2011 08:25:00 AM ET
Trial to Begin in Lawrence King Murder
By Julie Bolcer

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/07/05/Trial_to_Begin_in_Lawrence_King_Murder/

Brandon McInerney, 17, will go on trial this week for the 2008 shooting death of Lawrence King, a younger classmate in California who the defendant believed had a crush on him.

According to the Los Angeles Times, "Prosecutor Maeve Fox says she will outline a straightforward case in opening arguments set to begin Tuesday in a Chatsworth courtroom. The Oxnard teenager carefully planned and carried out the Feb. 12, 2008, execution of his eighth-grade classmate, she said.

[...]

McInerney, who was 14 at the time of the murder, will be tried as an adult for the crime that occurred in front of other students and a teacher. The charges include a hate-crime allegation based on his reported neo-Nazi sympathies. He faces 53 years to life if convicted.

[Shana A]

Gay student's slaying carefully planned, prosecutor tells jurors [Updated]
July 5, 2011 | 12:13 pm

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/07/brandon-mcinerney-planned-and-carried-out-execution-of-gay-classmate.html

An Oxnard student carefully planned and carried out the execution of a 15-year-old gay classmate because of his ongoing feud with the victim and his white supremacist belief that homosexuality is an abomination, a Ventura County prosecutor said Tuesday.

Brandon McInerney, now 17, is charged with murder in the 2008 shooting death of Lawrence King in a high-profile case that has rallied the gay community and triggered calls for greater protections of young homosexuals on school campuses.

King was bullied by McInerney and other boys at the school, Deputy Dist. Atty. Maeve Fox said in her opening statement in the trial, which is being conducted at a courthouse in Chatsworth. But shortly before his death, King had begun wearing high heels, makeup and earrings to school and had become more confident in himself, she said.