Renato Hughes, Jr
Posted on 11/15/2007 9:00:47 AM PST by SmithL
San Francisco (AP) -- Three young black men break into a white man's home in rural Northern California.
The homeowner admits to fatally shooting two of them — but it's the surviving black man who's facing murder charges in a trial that begins Thursday in Lake County Superior Court.
With an explosive mixture of race, death and a rarely used legal doctrine, the case of Renato Hughes Jr. has brought unprecedented attention to remote Lake County, where wine country aspirations overlay a long farming tradition. The case has taken on racial overtones in part because of the sparsely populated county's racial makeup, which defies state trends by remaining 91 percent white and 2 percent black.
The prosecutor has argued race played no part in the charges stemming from the Dec. 7 shootings, in which Clearlake homeowner Shannon Edmonds shot San Franciscans Rashad Williams and Christian Foster in the back.
Hughes Jr., also of San Francisco, escaped, only to face first degree murder charges in connection with the deaths of his childhood friends.
Lake County's District Attorney Jon Hopkins is not charging the white homeowner but is instead invoking the Provocative Act doctrine, which allows him to charge Hughes with murder for taking actions that spurred Edmonds to kill. Hopkins said the young men stormed through the house and terrified Edmonds' family and brutally beat his stepson.
Hopkins is not pursuing the death penalty.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
At least the DA in this case is taking the correct action, instead of trying to crucify the homeowner (which is SOP in California, unfortunately).
The writers act as though this is some sort of outrage.I call it a happy ending.
They don’t have capital punishment, but they can sentence people to have to travel with and listen to Barbara Boxer for the length of the conviction. This is understandably on review for violation of the protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
Seems this little nugget, from further on down in the story,would be easy enough for the writers to check out. So they wouldn't have to present it as heresay.
The perps were from SF but the crime was committed north of there in a rural area. The courts of SF are not involved.
Why not Felony Murder?
They do, though it’s easy to forget. They’ve pretty much had it since day one after the moratorium ended in 1976, but they’ve only executed 13 people in that time.
Ah.. thought I must have missed something.
I'm not sure what race has to do with this: unless they can show that the homeowner routinely allows white people to invade his home in the middle of the night and physically assault his family while he serves the intruders tea and crumpets, they have no grounds whatever to allege that he is racist.
Which, of course, in itself has no legal bearing.
MJ is not available in SF? Maybe they need to open a “farmer’s” market.
MJ?
Here we go again. Brace yourselves. There will almost certainly be demonstrations. They will say this is another jena, blah blah blah. Give the guy a medal for eliminating from society 2 scumbags who would savagely beat a kid and leave him permanently handicapped.
>They don’t have capital punishment...
Yes they do.
California has executed 13 men since 1976, including one just recently that Arnold refused to block.
Remember Tookie Williams? He was the 2nd death penalty in Ca. that year. (2005)
MaryJane?
Hint: grass.
excellent
Some kind of Rastifarian Church?
My first thought was “Someone in San Francisco has a gun?”
I think we have 20-25 death sentences a year and less than 1 execution on average. That’s why death row population is so high and Gay Davis wanted to build a new one at Folsom for $600,000,000. Let’s hire a few more judges and expedite these cases.
Actually there is a Rastafarian church in San Francisco know as the Church of St. John Coltrane under the auspices of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (many Rastafarians have formally or informally joined the EOC).
Clearlake is 75 miles north of Sodom on the bay.
Felony murder is routinely charged in cases like this. I fail to see how this is some rare and random occurence.
What would be the point of that when California is in the jurisdiction of Ninth Circuit Court of Schlemiels?
Because the Lefty reporter is ignorant and wishes to make this prosecution appear to be a racist act.
Perception is reality. The writer intends to make the perception of his SF readers to be that this thug is being selectively prosecuted because he is not white (which for the average SF reader is wasted effort, that perception would be pre-existant).
This is simply a deranged San Fransicko paper coming to the rescue of thugs who received the consequences that SHOULD attend the act of breaking into an occupied home at night and assaulting the occupants..
The bias in the telling of this story could ONLY be done by mind numbed leftists or black racists...
Is the NAACP and the black preacher going to defend the right of blacks to invade a home in the middle of the night and beat the residents?
It matters NOT how the men were shot - if they were running through my home after assaulting a member of my family, they would be shot upon first opportunity to squeeze off the rounds....
I would be “in fear of my life or the lives of my loved ones”, “I didn’t know if they were running for their weapons or to attack another member of my family — so I shot them.”
Too bad one of them lived to cause expense and “two versions” of the shooting..
Renato Hughes, Jr
This entire article is one big editorial. So overwhelming is the tilt to this story it is almost impossible to parse it and refute the inane suppositions contained therein.
HMMMM, no dreadlocks could be a problem. ;-)
Doh. Got it, thanks.
Amen!
Rack’em and Stack’em
The lesson should be that the ONLY thing “cool” about being a thug, is when they assume room temperature...
Edmond's family was terrified by the events, in which the young men rampaged through the house, yelling, cursing, and asking for marijuana, Hopkins said.
Edmond's stepson, then-high school junior Dale Lafferty, became brain damaged as a result of the baseball bat beating he took during the melee, and now lives in a rehabilitation center, the prosecutor said.
Oh the injustice! /sarc
MariJuana = MJ (for those still trying to wrap their heads around the shorthand).
His heart is in the right place. But, technically speaking, isn't the normal charge for this "felony murder"? In addition to B & E, assault with intent to murder, home invasion, shouldn't the added charge be felony murder--for being involved in a crime in which the accomplices die?
but it's the surviving black man who's facing murder charges in a trial that begins Thursday in Lake County Superior Court.
Point taken!
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I believe that in most states it's also necessary to show that the defendant did, or reasonable could have, foreseen that the crime could meaningfully increase the likelihood of death occurring in the manner that it actually did. In most cases the requirement will be met easily, and some states seem to stretch causality might thin (e.g. trying to prosecute someone for murder because the a news helicopter crashed while filming his attempt to flee police). Nonetheless, there are limits, especially in cases of indirect causation. If a crime causes someone to miss a flight, and the next flight (which they catch) has a fatal crash, I don't think the original criminal could reasonably be blamed for the victim's death. Though some states might try it anyway.
These morons would have been much better off breaking into a gun-free house in san francisco.
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