Brandon McInerney Pleads Not Guilty To Hate Crime

Brandon McInerney, the teenager who shot and killed an openly gay classmate in February 2008, has pleaded "not guilty" to murder. The 15-year-old is being tried as an adult.

Ventura County Superior Court Superior Court Judge Bruce Young set a pretrial hearing for Oct. 23 and a trial date for Dec. 1.

[...]

McInerney’s lawyers, Scott Wippert and Robyn Bramson, filed a legal motion Thursday to dismiss the special circumstance of lying in wait that was tacked onto the felony criminal charges by prosecutors after a three-day preliminary hearing.

Attaching a lying in wait special circumstance to a murder charge in a juvenile case, by law, automatically transfers the case to adult court.

[...]

McInerney is accused of murder and a hate crime in the killing of King, who wore female clothing to school and told classmates he was gay. Prosecutors allege McInerney waited 15 to 20 minutes in a classroom before shooting King, constituting grounds for adding the lying-in-wait charge.

McInerney faces as much as 53 years to life in prison if convicted of all charges in adult court. Prosecutors have offered to agree to a sentence of 25 years to life if he pleads guilty to first-degree murder and the hate-crime allegation.

Prosecutors allege McInerney, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, subscribed to a white-supremacist philosophy.

Hat/tip Joe.My.God