Hung Jury In Larry King Murder

A mistrial may be declared in the trial of Brandon McInerney after jurors could not agree on how to convict him for shooting to death openly gay classmate Larry King. [UPDATE: The judge has now declared a mistrial.]

Defense attorney Scott Wippert and co-counsel Robyn Bramson didn’t dispute that McInerney killed King. But they argued he was pushed to an emotional breaking point by King’s attentions toward him and the school’s failure to rein in King’s conduct. They also appeared to reach out for jury sympathy by calling several of McInerney’s relatives to the stand to testify to the abuse the young boy suffered at the hands of his drug-abuser father. McInerney was a boy who couldn’t cry, because if he did his father would smack him in the face and tell him to take it like a man, his aunts testified. Other family members said the father seemed to delight in humiliating his son in public. The father died from a fall while his son was incarcerated. Wippert told jurors that his client killed King but should be found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, not murder. In closing arguments, he implied that McInerney should not ever have been put in front of them because the act happened when was a youth.

Prosecutors have not yet revealed plans for a re-trial, should one be necessary.