America’s Criminal Injustice System

As Larry tells it, one morning that August, two of the most vicious Mob gangbangers dogged him on the streets around The ‘Corn, demanding to know when he’d take up a collection from his OG buddies to pay them off. He took shelter along with his crew in a friend’s apartment in one of the project’s towers. When he told his friends about the latest threats, the group debated what to do, damping their fears by smoking weed and drinking mai tais.

Later, near dark, Larry and his friend Arthur wandered over to the local liquor store to buy the cigarillos they filled with weed to make blunts.  On the way, the same two Acorn Mob punks who had accosted them earlier that day threatened to kill Larry if he didn’t come up with some money fast. Larry and Arthur sought refuge in the store, but one of the young thugs followed them inside. The other waited outside the door.

Larry had had enough. He snapped. He grabbed an old handgun Arthur carried for protection and ran out of the store. He says he fired once, hoping to scare off the two of them. That started a volley of wild shots. When Arthur’s gun jammed, Larry ran back inside the liquor store. As soon as the shooting stopped, Larry and Arthur split the neighborhood. Somehow in the melee, one of the Acorn mobsters was shot and later died at the county hospital.

Larry and Arthur were arrested some months later. Larry was charged with murder and Arthur with being a felon with a gun and an accessory with knowledge of a crime. Word on the street was that the victim had been killed accidently by his own cousin, the gangsta who had followed Larry into the liquor store. Even the victim’s stepfather told me he believed that. But no witness — and there were many standing outside the liquor store during the melee, including several of Larry’s buddies — would come forward. They all had records, were doing drugs, and were afraid of the police.

Six cartridges from one gun and a single cartridge from another were found in the street near the body. Neither gun was ever found. The victim had suffered a “through and through” wound, which meant there were no bullet fragments to match to a particular gun anyway.

California’s self-defense and provocation laws — unlike Florida’s “stand your ground law,” which figured in George Zimmerman’s killing of Trayvon Martin — are very strict. Larry’s lawyer worried that a judge would rule self-defense couldn’t be justified because Larry had fired the first shot (even if it was, as he claimed, in the air). His possible PTSD, the recent dire tragedies in his personal life, the pressures of Oakland’s mean streets, the fact that his mind was addled by weed and mai tais — all would be irrelevant in a California trial.

So Larry didn’t have the luxury of a Twinkie defense. He feared a jury. No poor person gets a jury of his or her peers. Few poor people are called for jury duty because the lists of potential jurors are made up from voter and drivers’ license records; few poor people living the fugitive life vote and many don’t have a driver’s license. Coming to court might mean being stopped and frisked by the police. (I’ve had a defense witness arrested on a warrant while waiting to testify outside court and others who have been followed home by the police after they showed up to support a family member on trial.) No prosecutor would permit anyone on a jury who’s led the kind of life Larry has — someone with a drug record (even if 20 years old), or who understood life and death in Oakland’s war zones firsthand.

Larry feared mandatory sentencing, which severely restricts a judge’s ability to vary a sentence by taking into consideration mitigating facts in a particular person’s life like Larry’s clean record for the last 20 years, his possible PTSD, or the daily grind of violence in The ‘Corn. That meant he was facing 25 years to life if convicted of murder. For defending himself. For firing one shot when it wasn’t even clear who had killed the victim.

Larry took a plea to a killing he may not have done. Voluntary manslaughter with a mandatory sentence of 12 years in prison.

The Acorn Mob youngster who threatened Larry in the liquor store that August night and probably fired the fatal round was soon arrested for many armed robberies and sent to prison for 15 years.

I saw Larry right before he left the county jail for prison. I apologized for not being able to defend him. He thanked me for trying and added, “It ain’t just, but that’s how they do.”

Judith Coburn, after decades as a journalist writing for the Village Voice, Mother Jones, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and TomDispatch, among other media outlets, became a private eye 10 years ago, specializing in death penalty cases.

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