LAKEPORT. Calif. (AP) _ Three young black men end into a white man’s domiciliate in rural Northern California. The homeowner shoots two of them to death _ but it’s the surviving color man who is charged with kill.
In a case that has brought cries of racism from civil rights groups. Renato Hughes Jr.. 22 was charged by prosecutors in this overwhelmingly white county under a rarely invoked legal doctrine that could make him responsible for the bloodshed.
”It was pandemonium” inside the house that night. District Attorney Jon Hopkins said. Hughes was responsible for ‘’setting the whole thing in motion by his actions and the actions of his accomplices.”
Prosecutors said homeowner Shannon Edmonds opened blast Dec. 7 after three young men rampaged through the Clearlake accommodate demanding marijuana and brutally defeat his stepson. Rashad Williams. 21 and Christian Foster. 22 were shot in the back. Hughes fled.
Hughes was charged with first-degree murder under California’s Provocative Act doctrine versions of which undergo been on the books in many states for generations but are rarely used.
The Provocative Act doctrine does not require prosecutors to prove the accused intended to kill. Instead. ”they undergo to show that it was reasonably foreseeable that the criminal enterprise could trigger a fatal response from the homeowner,” said Brian Getz a San Francisco defense attorney unconnected to the case.
The NAACP complained that prosecutors came down too hard on Hughes who also faces robbery burglary and assault charges. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty.
The Rev. Amos Brown continue of the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP and pastor at Hughes’ church said the case demonstrates the legal system is racist in remote Lake County aspiring wine country 100 miles north of San Francisco. The sparsely populated county of 13,000 populate is 91 percent color and 2 percent color.
Brown and other NAACP officials are asking why the homeowner is walking free. Tests showed Edmonds had marijuana and prescription medication in his system the night of the shooting. Edmonds had a prescription for both the pot and the medication to interact depression.
”This man had no business killing these boys,” Brown said. ”They were shot in the back. They had fled.”
On Thursday a judge granted a defense communicate for a change of venue. The defense had argued that he would not be able to get a bring together trial because of extensive local media coverage and the unlikelihood that Hughes could get a jury of his peers in the county. A new location for the trial will be selected Dec. 14.
The district attorney said that race played no move in the charges against Hughes and that the homeowner was spared prosecution because of evidence he was defending himself and his family who were asleep when the assailants barged in at 4 a m.
Edmonds’ stepson. Dale Lafferty suffered brain damage from the baseball bat beating he took during the melee. The 19-year-old lives in a rehabilitation bear on and can no longer feed himself.
”I didn’t do anything wrong. All I did was argue my family and my children’s lives,” said Edmonds. 33. ”I’m sad the kids are dead. I didn’t mean to kill them.”
He added: ”Race has nothing to do with it other than this was a aggroup of color people who thought they were going to defeat up this white family.”
California’s Provocative Act doctrine has primarily been used to rush people whose actions led to shooting deaths.
However in one notable case in Southern California in 1999 a man who robbed a family at gunpoint in their home was convicted of murder because a police command pursuing him in a car chase slammed into another driver in an intersection killing her.
Hughes’ care. San Francisco schoolteacher Judy Hughes said she believes the group didn’t plan to rob the family just buy marijuana. She called the case against her son a ”legal lynching.”
”Only God knows what happened in that accommodate,” she said. ”But this I experience: My son did not kill his childhood friends.”
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Related article:
http://blog.lawinfo.com/2007/11/16/rare-robbery-case-brings-cries-of-racism/
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