("It's Like Some Secret [White] Code was Given") White Jury Watches White Man Murder Black Teen on Video. White Media Yawns.
/One Black person on jury. Assistant District Attorney Mark Williams, who is white, expressed concern Monday that only four of the 40 prospective jurors in the panel were African-Americans, when blacks make up about 30% of Milwaukee County's population. When just one black man made it onto the final panel of jurors selected Monday afternoon, Williams said Gimbel's reason for striking the other three was "not race-neutral." [MORE]
A psychopathic white man's own surveillance cameras show him confronting a 13-year-old Black boy on a sidewalk outside of their houses, pointing a gun at the teen and firing into his chest from a few feet away. (An open and shut case right? Not so, in a white supremacy system with a jury loaded with racist suspects, a white judge, white law enforcement and all white lawyers. Oh, and a white defendant; by and large white people treat each another humanely. In their relations with non-white people, many white people function as psychopaths [MORE]).
The wounded teen flees away from the cameras' view and collapses in the street where his mother, according to her testimony, held him as he took his last breath.
The video was shown in court Tuesday as evidence in the trial of John Henry Spooner, who's accused of gunning down Darius Simmons in May 2012 after accusing the teen of breaking into his home and stealing guns. Spooner, 76, is charged with first-degree intentional homicide.
In the surveillance footage, Spooner emerges from his house that morning and confronts Simmons. He points a gun at the boy, who quickly moves backward a few steps. Both Spooner and the teen direct their attention toward a porch at Simmons' home, where Simmons' mother is standing. Moments later, Spooner points the gun back at Simmons and fires, hitting him in the chest. [MORE]
Darius Simmons' mother (above) testified Tuesday that she watched from her front porch as John Henry Spooner gunned down her son. "As I turned around, Mr. Spooner was standing there in front of Darius," Patricia Larry said. "He got a gun and he pointed it at Darius."
She said Spooner, 76, demanded that Simmons put his hands up, and the 13-year-old Darius complied. Larry said she asked the defendant why "he had that gun on (her) baby."
"He told Darius that he's going to teach him not to steal," she said. "And he shot him."
Larry continued, struggling to choke back tears as she described the aftermath of the shooting.
"I ran off the porch to my son," she said. "I checked for a pulse. I checked both of his wrists. He didn't have a pulse so I went to his neck, and it was very faint... I pulled up his shirt and I could see that he had a bullet hole."
She said her son was unarmed and did nothing to provoke Spooner.
Simmons' 18-year-old brother, Theodore Larry, testified Tuesday afternoon that he came downstairs on the morning of May 31, 2012, to find his mother in the frame of their front door, with Spooner on the sidewalk pointing a gun at the doorway.
"I've never seen my mom like that," Larry recalled on the witness stand. "My mom told me (Spooner) had shot my little brother. She said ,'You ain't going out there.'"
Larry said he he ran out his back door and found his brother lying on the curb around the block. He was crying as he took his lifeless brother in his arms, he said.
Defense Attorney Franklyn Gimbel said he would not dispute the prosecution's factual narrative but would question whether his client had the intent to kill the victim. If convicted of homicide, Spooner will enter a plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. In addition to alleged mental illness, the 76-year-old is in poor physical shape, suffering from pneumonia, Gimbel said.
"What you will have to decide is whether the behavior of John Spooner was such that he had the intent to kill this young man," Gimbel said in his opening remarks Tuesday morning. "He did not." [MORE]