Tuesday, September 19th 2006
Thug Defense
A particularly disgusting story:
The defense attorney for a 19-year-old San Leandro man admitted today that his client participated in the “horrific” beating death of a 100-pound homeless woman in Berkeley last year but said he shouldn’t be convicted of murder.
In his closing argument in the trial of Jarell Johnson and Derrell Morgan, a 19-year-old Berkeley man, for the death of 49-year-old Maria Catherine King, Alameda County Deputy Public Defender Ray Plumhoff said Johnson “is a thug, but that doesn’t make him into a murderer.”
Plumhoff told jurors that Johnson should be convicted of something less than murder because “he was reacting to a dispute that got out of hand but he had no intention of killing her.
What did this “non-murderer” do?
Beltramo said King was “motionless, soundless and defenseless” after being knocked to the ground, but instead of helping King or just walking away, Morgan and Johnson kicked her in her vital organs at least three times each.
He said the manager of an apartment building across the street who saw part of the incident from his window said the two men were kicking something as if they were kicking a soccer ball as hard as they could.
Beltramo told jurors, “It wasn’t a soccer ball, it was a woman’s head.”
How about thug and murderer? Lock this guy up and cut off any form of human contact. Death would be too kind for this monster.
