Brandon McInerney slayed classmate Larry King with two savage gunshots to the back of the head. These are the facts of a case which has been blown into such psychosocial insanity, that one wonders if justice will ever be done, not just for the lives lost and disrupted, but for the American Criminal Justice system.
According to diverse reports from students and staff at E. O. Green Junior High School in Ventura, King was an extrovert experimenting with homosexual conduct, harassing McInerney with unwanted sexual advances.
The Prosecution argues that McIrerney was a latent white supremacist with homophobic tendencies. He killed the kid because he was gay.
The Defense, true to form, charges that the younger boy, now a younger man and violent offender, was a "troubled teen" in a dysfunctional home.
Sympathy cannot be an arbiter in this matter. "The law is reason free from passion," Aristotle opined. His unheeded advice is a necessary tonic for the culture wars dominating the courtroom these days.
With the influx of social, sexual, and psychological arguments frustrating the pursuit of facts in evidence to a just verdict, at what point will do away with the rule of law and succumb to vigilante justice or moral anarchy? A right outcome cannot be deterred because of a battle of experts trying to plunge the interminable psyche of the adolescent for ephemeral motives.
One kid killed another kid. This is evil; this must be punished; this must be handled with all deliberate speed.