Sailor arrested in Camp Pendleton shooting death of seaman
SAN DIEGO – A sailor was charged Thursday with fatally shooting and burning Seaman August Provost during an alleged burst of crime June 30 at Camp Pendleton.
In announcing the charges, Navy officials suggested that Petty Officer 2nd Class Jonathan Campos killed his victim indiscriminately. They again said there’s no evidence of a hate crime against Provost, who was gay, or of gang-related activity.
Campos, 32, of Lancaster, had served with Provost on Assault Craft Unit 5. He faces 16 charges, including murder, arson, unlawful entry, theft of military property and wrongful possession of a firearm, Capt. Matt Brown, a spokesman for Navy Region Southwest, said during a news conference Thursday afternoon at the San Diego Naval Base.
The Navy hasn’t announced a date for Campos’ pretrial hearing, called an Article 32 hearing.
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San Diego Union Tribune -
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Neo-Nazi ideas blamed in gay Oxnard teen’s slaying
July 22 marked the third and likely final day of testimony in the pre-trial hearing of a boy accused of gunning down a gay classmate at an Oxnard junior high school.
Prosecutors contended Tuesday in Ventura County Superior Court that the boy, Brandon McInerney, was motivated at least in part by neo-Nazi beliefs.
McInerney was 14 and Larry King was 15 when King was fatally shot during a computer lab class on Feb. 12, 2008. McInerney was acquainted with local neo-Nazis and kept a notebook with elaborate drawings of Nazi symbols and regalia, according to testimony from an investigator. McInerney, now 15, has been charged as an adult with first-degree murder.
Read more about the shooting and pretrial hearing.
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Boy accused of killing gay classmate bragged he had guns at home, police say
Oxnard junior high school student Brandon McInerney bragged that he had guns at home if he ever wanted to kill someone, a police investigator testified at the youth’s pretrial hearing today in Ventura County Superior Court.
McInerney made the comment to another student at E.O. Green Junior High in Oxnard sometime before walking into the classroom and allegedly gunning down gay classmate Larry King on the morning of Feb. 12, 2008, said Oxnard police Sgt. Kevin Baysinger.
“Brandon said if he ever wanted to kill anybody, his dad had a bunch of guns and he had the capability,” Baysinger told the court. Other witness testified that McInerney, then 14, and King had been feuding over King’s alleged romantic overtures toward McInerney.
McInerney was clearly irritated after King, 15, reportedly said, “Baby, I love you,” the day before the shooting occurred, based on interviews with students. Other students reported similar threats, he said.
McInerney reportedly told one of King’s friends the day before the shooting, “Tell Larry goodbye because you’re not going to see him again,” Baysinger said. Other students reported similar threats, he said.
The testimony came during the first day of a pretrial hearing to determine whether the case should go to trial.
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Voter ‘animus’ to be issue in Calif marriage case
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an amendment to the Colorado Constitution that outlawed discrimination protections for gay people, same-sex couples could not enter into civil unions or domestic partnerships anywhere in the nation, much less get married. But as they seek to persuade a federal judge to strike down California’s ban on gay marriages, lawyers for two unmarried gay couples are using that 13-year-old decision as their road map — one they expect will eventually lead the high court to take up the marriage issue. In the Colorado case, Romer v. Evans, the Supreme Court majority held that voters’ dislike of gays and the laws that several cities had approved to shield them from bias motivated the state amendment. Such “animus,” it said, was incompatible with the section of the U.S. Constitution that requires the government to treat its citizens equally absent a compelling reason to do otherwise. The attorneys behind the challenge to California’s Proposition 8 plan to argue during a pretrial hearing Thursday that by stripping gays of the right to wed, the voter-approved ban runs afoul of America’s founding framework in the same way — and for the same reason. “Romer is a strikingly similar situation to what we have here. You had a ballot initiative, a majority vote of the people, taking away a right,” said Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a member of the legal team led by former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and veteran trial lawyer David Boies. “And there was no justification or rationale other than disapproval by that majority of that group.” U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker on Tuesday issued a tentative order to fast-track the case in his San Francisco court. Among the questions he said he wants covered at trial are whether sexual orientation is unchangeable, if permitting same-sex marriage “destabilizes” traditional unions and whether Proposition 8’s ballot history demonstrates the measure had “discriminatory intent.” California Attorney General Jerry Brown, a defendant in the case, has sided with gay rights advocates and declined to defend the ban, which overturned a California Supreme Court ruling that had legalized same-sex marriages. The state Supreme Court five weeks ago upheld the measure, saying it represented a valid exercise of voters’ authority to amend the California Constitution. Proposition 8’s sponsors, a coalition of religious conservative groups called Protect Marriage, has been given permission to intervene in the federal case. In court papers, the group’s lawyers rejected the assertions that anti-gay attitudes fueled the November measure and that the 1996 Colorado case was applicable. “Nothing in California law, either Proposition 8 or otherwise, indicates that Californians harbor animus towards gay and lesbian individuals,” they wrote. Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision, attorneys for gay rights and Christian conservative groups have debated whether the Romer decision could be used to expand gay rights. The ruling marked the first time the Supreme Court determined that the Constitution’s equal rights guarantees extended to gays and lesbians. “The basic point of Romer is that government cannot ever act out of hostility toward a group of people, and whether that is in the context of marriage or anti-discrimination law, the point carries over,” said Suzanne Goldberg, who worked on the case and now directs Columbia Law School’s Sexuality and Gender Law Program. The ruling has been cited, though so far unsuccessfully, in past challenges to gay marriage bans in Nebraska and Florida. At the same time, gay rights groups mostly have shied away from pursuing federal marriage cases in favor of pursuing marriage rights in state courts. Legal observers on both sides of the debate agree, however, that California’s Proposition 8 presents novel questions that could make the issue ripe for federal action.
San Francisco Chronicle
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