Murder Trial, part II

From there, the situation escalates to a verbal confrontation. Both groups begin yelling racial slurs. The defendant yells "skin head" and "red neck" to the guy and calls the girl "slut, bitch and whore". He eggs on the other group, yelling, "do you wanna fight? do you wanna fight?". The other group yells back, calling him "fucking beaner" and tells him to "go back to your country".

The defendant is raging at this point, but his two friends manage to push him back to an area of the parking lot where their other car was. Midway there, the defendant yells out "fucking white people". This infuriates the man in the other group, who throws off his shirt and runs back to the bar to get his friend (the victim). The victim runs out of the bar, also rips off his shirt, and they head over to the car. One guy kicks the car, putting a large dent in it. The defendant gets out of the car, and a fistfight ensues.

Things get a little "fuzzy" at this point, as we heard testimony from several witnesses that contradicts where each person was located. One version says that the defendant and the victim were fighting on the ground. The defendant was on top of the victim and they were both punching each other. The other two white men were also fighting on the ground. The Korean man (friend of the defendant) pulls the defendant off the victim and that fight stops briefly. The defendant sees his friend fighting with the other man, and takes out his knife. He yells "I have a knife", intending to stop the other fight. It works for a moment and he puts the knife away. But, then the girl runs by and tags his friend (defendant's white friend) three times in the head as he is getting off the other guy.

This starts the fighting again, and the Korean man again tries to pull the defendant out of the fighting. The defendant breaks away from him, and runs to another area of the parking lot, towards the other men. He again pulls out his knife. Then, the girl runs by him, hitting him in the head once. He calls her a "f-ing bitch". Her boyfriend, the victim, charges towards him, swinging. The defendant throws what looks like three "round-house" punches. The bouncer of the establishment is close by and yells out "you've been stabbed!". The victim looks down, seeing the stab wounds and says "you f-in stabbed me???" He attempts to walk away, making it only about 20 feet and then collapses. His girlfriend, friend and the bouncer rush over to him, trying to revive him. The friend of the defendant had called 911 moments earlier, but help arrives too late.

After the stabbing, the defendant folded his knife and tried to throw it on the roof of a nearby building. It slid down, falling to the ground, where it stayed until the authorities arrived.

This happened in May of 2007. The victim was 26 at the time, and the defendant was 23; he has been in jail since the incident. The girl was convicted of 2 counts of assault, and is currently serving time in jail, now pregnant with another man's child.

The jury deliberated for two days. We found the defendant guilty of Voluntary Manslaughter. The sentencing is Sept. 26th.