Tragic firearm stories are far too numerous in which both victim and perpetrator share misery at multiple levels – death, grief, loss and a knowing that justice, whatever that means, will never resolve the pain.
There are many questions left unanswered perhaps forever in this tragic story – a story that has been investigated, analyzed, discussed and written about by legal experts, educators, the media and everyone involved. One puzzling question is how could the jurors reject the hate crime charge? But they did. Remarkably however, one question was left out, never considered. How did a 14-year-old boy have access to a loaded firearm?
The Larry King murder trial, which recently ended in a mistrial, concerns multiple volatile issues besetting American society and school children in particular. This is truly a case in which a 15-year-old boy was murdered in cold blood while sitting in class one morning, and the defense has worked tirelessly to try to prove he deserved it simply for not being like other males. Also, this is a case in which a 14-year-old boy was adjudicated and tried as an adult.
On February 12, 2008, a 14-year-old boy named Brandon McInerney walked into a classroom at E.O. Green Junior High in Oxnard. He sat behind 15-year-old Larry King, pulled out a .22 caliber revolver and shot Larry in the back of the head. The teacher screamed. Larry slumped. Brandon, according to testimony, made eye contact with a classmate. Then he shot Larry King again. Police found Brandon a few blocks away, talking on his cell phone. “I’m sorry, I did it officer,” he reportedly said.
Brandon McInerney, an athletic teen, lived in a bedroom in his father’s house containing Nazi memorabilia, Hitler speeches and swastika drawings. Brandon was found to be a member of the Silver Strand Locals, a turf-based criminal street gang, and is a white supremacist who had been indoctrinated into and adheres to a white supremacist ideology. His parents divorced after a violent, tumultuous marriage. His mother was once arrested for drugs. The father was an alcoholic presiding over a home so dysfunctional that, according to one report, he forbade his son to cry after punching him in the face.
Larry King was a slight boy who lived in a group home for abused or troubled teens. Larry was adopted at age two, as his biological father had abandoned Larry’s mother, a drug addict who failed to care properly for her son. Larry had been diagnosed with emotional problems and was taking medication, which may have caused him to repeat the first grade. By third grade he began to be bullied by fellow students, ostensibly for his effeminacy. Perhaps as a response to bullying he asserted his sexuality. At age 12 Larry was placed on probation for theft and vandalism. Three months before his murder, he was removed from his adoptive home and placed in a group home.
Larry King self-identified as gay and, in addition to his school uniform, wore high heels, earrings and other make-up. This made him a target for bullies. But Larry reportedly responded aggressively. He flirted with his tormenters, Brandon McInerney among them. However, Brandon was especially humiliated and outraged by Larry’s attentions. The day before the shooting, Larry is said to have taunted Brandon saying, “Baby, I love you.” Brandon told anyone who would listen that he was going to kill Larry. One of Larry’s friends testified that Brandon said, “Tell Larry goodbye because you’re not going to see him again.”
E. O. Green School officials will always be wondering what they could have done to prevent this tragedy. Middle school-age kids are not secure regarding their sense of self and especially their sexuality, whether straight or gay. Teachers observe these daily dramas and administrators struggle with how to set protocol. If you think there is an easy answer, spend a few hours observing and listening to kids at school as they struggle to find their way on the complex path of growing up.
There was no dispute that Brandon McInerney shot and killed 15-year-old Lawrence King in an E.O. Green Middle School classroom in February 2008. Even with testimony of various classmates, the case focused on a motive for the slaying, which strangely has yet to be resolved, and whether Brandon should be convicted of first-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter. The Ventura County District Attorney believed that this was a first-degree murder with a lying-in-wait special allegation according to Jim Ellison, chief assistant district attorney. That special allegation made it mandatory that the murder case be tried in adult court, not juvenile court. Therefore, prosecutors chose to try Brandon, a troubled boy, as an adult for premeditated first-degree murder with enhancements of discharge of a firearm and a hate crime. Conviction would bring a mandatory 50-year sentence.
However, why did the judge, during his instructions, allow the jury to consider a voluntary manslaughter charge for a person who admitted the murder and talked about how he contemplated murdering Larry and then planned it out? Even after it was revealed Brandon had white supremacist ties and wanted to kill Larry on purpose, the judge decided to allow the jury to consider a voluntary manslaughter charge, which would have earned Brandon a sentence of four to eleven years in prison, but only if all 12 jurors found him not guilty of first and second-degree murder.
Also, in effect on trial, was the way school administrators and teachers handled the known conflict. The staff at E. O. Green was clearly struggling with Larry’s situation – how to balance his right to self-expression while preventing it from disrupting others. Legally, they couldn’t stop him from wearing girls’ clothes, according to the California Attorney General’s Office, because of a state hate-crime law that prevents gender discrimination. This child, possibly due to his personality and background, pushed his rights as far as he could. The idea of expressing heterosexuality or masculinity in middle school is, of course, never the cause of anything bad or wrong. It would never be considered “flaunting” oneself to be proud of that. And in fact students flaunt their heterosexuality and gender conformity every single day in middle school and high school.
The defense put the victim’s sexual orientation and gender identity on trial from the beginning, claiming that the killer was provoked into the murder by a very flamboyant, aggressive gay male in a dress, a male who sexually harassed the killer on a daily basis. Prosecutors asked the judge to instruct jurors to disregard Larry’s sexuality.
The case ended in a mistrial on September 1, 2011. The jurors were unable to decide between murder and voluntary manslaughter charges and reported that seven members wanted to convict on a charge of voluntary manslaughter, while five wanted murder. Notably, all of the jurors rejected the hate crime charge.
Troubled teens, gender identity, tensions in school administration, mixed messages transmitted to impressionable kids, and media frenzy cover every aspect of the case except one: a 14-year-old boy had easy access to a loaded firearm. In article after article this glaring fact was not mentioned: Brandon’s parents, clearly in violation of the Child Access Prevention law of California, were not prosecuted or held responsible in anyway.
Latest Update: (10-06-11) Ventura County prosecutors will re-try Brandon McInerey. Unbelievably, they are dropping the hate crime charge but decline to comment on the reasons for this decision. The Los Angeles Times reported that one juror said none of the 12 panelists believed the shooting was a hate crime. She said that many jurors came to believe that the murdered child, Larry King, was bullying McInerey by making unwanted sexual advances. Prosecutors still plan to try Brandon as an adult for first-degree murder. In the original trial both prosecutors and defense attorneys acknowledged homophobia as a central issue to the murder.
