Larry King's Killer: "I wanted to kill him"

I haven't said much of late on the ongoing trial of Larry King's murder, Brandon McInerney. But a new Los Angeles Times article on the trial was too much to pass by. One of the elements of first degree murder is premeditation - i.e., that the murder was thought out and planned and not something that happened in the heat of the moment with no forethought. As is typical of criminal defense counsel, efforts are being made to paint McInerney as a victim of his circumstances including his f*cked up home setting. I'm sorry, but many, many people have risen above adverse home situations and certainly understood that killing someone was not acceptable. I don't buy the defense counsel's ploy and hopefully the effort will fail. Here are some highlights from the LA Times story:

The night before he killed Larry King, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney could think of nothing else. It wasn’t enough that King, a troubled eighth-grader, had started coming to school in high heels and makeup. But just that day he passed McInerney in the hallway and, in front of the lanky teen’s friends, uttered what McInerney saw as a repulsive come-on: “What’s up, baby?” It was the last straw.

For McInerney, there had been months of pressure to do better in school from his abusive, methamphetamine-addicted father. And now, there was this strange remark from this strange boy -- a comment that McInerney later described as “superdisgusting.” “I sat and I thought about it over and over,” he told psychologist Douglas Hoagland months after he shot King in a computer lab at E.O. Green Junior High in Oxnard. “It didn’t calm me down. It made me more angry. All I could think about was I wanted to kill him.”

McInerney’s internal monologue came out Monday in a Chatsworth courtroom as a prosecutor tried to shake the testimony of Hoagland, an expert for the defense in McInerney’s murder trial.

They [defense counsel] have argued that McInerney was a bright kid driven over the brink by a long history of violence at home and, in the end, teasing from the victim, whose cross-dressing he saw as in-your-face provocation.

On Feb. 12, 2008, after a night fuming over the perceived insult from King, McInerney left for school in a hurry — but came back to get his father’s loaded .22-caliber revolver, Hoagland testified.

He concealed it in a towel and stuffed it in his backpack. At school he stealthily withdrew the towel-wrapped gun and stuffed it into his pants. He told Hoagland he had started to have second thoughts about killing King, who sat immediately in front of him. But when he heard King telling a girl that he’d changed his name to Leticia, that changed.

Fox [the prosecutor] scoffed at the explanation, describing it as McInerney entering “a state of semi-unawareness.” She pointed to testimony from fellow students that McInerney had told them of his intent to kill King. When one of them asked McInerney whether he’d brought a gun to school, as he said he would, he lied and said he hadn’t. Not long afterward he fired the fatal shots.

Hillary's Not So Wonderful Experience

Playing dirty in politics can sometimes backfire. Hillary ought to know this, but perhaps not. She tries to depict herself as the more experienced candidate and also as a feminist champion, yet she has stooped pretty low at times and not always acted as I suspect most women would applaud – particularly in the case described in this article (http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/ny-usark245589997feb24,0,2670956.story?page=1). I for one hope this story gets some wide spread circulation. While it is true that “ethically” under the rules of the Arkansas State Bar she probably did nothing wrong, whether it was morally right is another matter entirely. Suffice it to say, the Bar’s rules of ethics do not always parallel what, in my opinion, is morally right. When that occurs, an attorney always has the option of not taking the case if they feel that they cannot in good conscience represent the client properly. That Hillary would do this to a 6th grade girl for a $250.00 fee is rather telling. I find it disgusting - I would have NOT taken the case. Here are some story highlights:

Hillary Rodham Clinton often invokes her "35 years of experience making change" on the campaign trail, recounting her work in the 1970s on behalf of battered and neglected children and impoverished legal-aid clients.But there is a little-known episode Clinton doesn't mention in her standard campaign speech in which those two principles collided. In 1975, a 27-year-old Hillary Rodham, acting as a court-appointed attorney, attacked the credibility of a 12-year-old girl in mounting an aggressive defense for an indigent client accused of rape in Arkansas - using her child development background to help the defendant.

Rodham, records show, questioned the sixth grader's honesty and claimed she had made false accusations in the past. She implied that the girl often fantasized and sought out "older men" like Taylor, according to a July 1975 affidavit signed "Hillary D. Rodham" in compact cursive.

Seen as an aggressive defense Rodham, legal and child welfare experts say, did nothing unethical by attacking the child's credibility - although they consider her defense of Taylor to be aggressive."She was vigorously advocating for her client. What she did was appropriate," said Andrew Schepard, director of Hofstra Law School's Center for Children, Families and the Law. "He was lucky to have her as a lawyer ... In terms of what's good for the little girl? It would have been hell on the victim. But that wasn't Hillary's problem." The victim, now 46, told Newsday that she was raped by Taylor, denied that she wanted any relationship with him and blamed him for contributing to three decades of severe depression and other personal problems.

"It's not true, I never sought out older men - I was raped," the woman said in an interview in the fall. Newsday is withholding her name as the victim of a sex crime.With all the anguish she'd felt over the case in the years since, there was one thing she never realized - that the lawyer for the man she reviles was none other than Hillary Rodham Clinton.

[T]he record shows that Rodham was also intent on questioning the girl's credibility. That line of defense crystallized in a July 28, 1975, affidavit requesting the girl undergo a psychiatric examination at the university's clinic."I have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and to engage in fantasizing," wrote Rodham, without referring to the source of that allegation. "I have also been informed that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body."Dale Gibson, the investigator, doesn't recall seeing evidence that the girl had fabricated previous attacks. Rodham was paid a $250 retainer for her services, minus 10 percent for court costs, records show.