Hat tip to Pam of Pandagon and Pam's House Blend for bringing me this infuriating story.
GRAND RAPIDS -- A Tennessee native was found guilty today of voluntary manslaughter in the slaying of Victor Manious, a Gaines Township man whose body was found in the trunk of his own vehicle, parked on a downtown street.This worries me to no end, as well it should. First, this man admits to trying to get the victim to his apartment for the sole intention of robbing him. Then, probably when it went wrong, he hit the man with a bat and locked him in his trunk, leaving him there to die while he used the victim's credit cards to buy shit.
Steven Scarborough, 22, was accused of luring 62-year-old Victor Manious to a friend's apartment to rob him. The prosecution said he then struck Manious in the head with a blunt force object before dragging him down stairs to Manious' car, stuffing the victim in the trunk.
Scarborough testified in his own defense, saying he was knocked out by Manious when the victim arrived at his friend's apartment. He woke to find Manious sexually assaulting him, he testified, so he hit the older man over the head with a baseball bat.
Scarborough had been charged with felony murder and faced mandatory life in prison without parole. Manslaughter carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.
Brinkman said medical experts will testify that if Manious had received treatment for his wounds right away, he could have survived rather than dying in the trunk of the car dressed only in his underwear.And what was Scarborough's defense? "He knocked me out (even though I didn't have any signs of being attacked) and when I woke up he was trying to spread TEH GAYQUEERHOMODISEASE to me! And since I'm a gay-hating Southern Baptist who goes to gay bars to find people to rob, I'm obviously justified in killing someone!"
Brinkman says that while Manious' body remained undiscovered for days, Scarborough used his cell phone and credit cars to pay for shopping sprees, gas and a plane ticket to Texas, where Scarborough was eventually arrested by police.
Yeah, seriously:
Scarborough testified that Manious asked for Robinson, then the 62-year-old Egypt native hit the younger man in the head and knocked him out. Scarborough said he woke up to find Manious in his underwear, on top of him, sexually assaulting him by oral sex.And to make it worse, the spineless worm of a defense lawyer the murderer picked out made the victim look as sinister as possible, saying that Manious was "living a secret gay life and was 'on the prowl'". Oh, and it's also not his fault because he was just doing what someone else wanted him to do.
Scarborough testified that he was so unnerved by the assault, which violated his beliefs as a Southern Baptist, that he grabbed a nearby bat and hit Manious in the head.
“(Scarborough) is not Albert Einstein,” Denenfeld said. “He is more of a follower than a leader.”He was just following orders, don't you know? Yeah, there's a defense that always works.
That's the value of a human life if that human was gay - it's not murder to lure him to your apartment to rob him, hit him with a bat, lock him in a trunk to die while you shop with his credit cards, and then claim some ridiculous story about how someone three times your age overpowered you, knocked you out without any signs of a struggle, and tried to make you TEH GAY.
If Manious had instead been some blue-eyed, blond-haired, pretty, rich, spoiled college girl who had something like this happen to her, would the jury have let a murderer get away with a much lesser charge? I seriously doubt that. But since you can invoke Gay Panic and get away with murder in today's society (since, you know, all gay people are out to force everyone else to be gay and will rape you if they know you're straight), we know that not everyone deserves equal justice under law, it seems.
Excuse me. I have to go throw up now. This whole thing makes me fucking sick to my stomach.
