Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 11:58:04 -0500 From: Chris Hagin To: Multiple recipients of list GLB-NEWS Subject: Trial begins in Laurel, Mississippi Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 06:11:19 -0500 Trial begins for teen who killed 2 gays Youth claims he acted out of fear of rape, AIDS LAUREL, Miss. -- Marvin McClendon admits he shot two gay men to death. He did it, he claims, to protect himself from rape and possible exposure to the AIDS virus. Prosecutors say he did it for money, robbing the men before he killed them. The 17-year-old went on trial Tuesday in the deaths of Joseph Shoemake and Robert Walters, who were shot in the head and left beside an abandoned railroad track. Their bodies were found Oct. 8. McClendon's first trial was canceled last week because the 70-member jury pool lacked enough black members. McClendon is black; Shoemake and Walters were white. The 12-member panel seated Tuesday morning included five blacks. The victims' sexual orientation also made it hard to pick a jury in this Bible Belt community. Many of the more than 100 potential jurors questioned Tuesday said they had strong religious objections to homosexuality. McClendon's lawyer, J. Ronald Parrish, argued that the 10th-grader shot the two men to death to protect himself. He claimed Shoemake, 24, and Walters, 34, tried to rape McClendon after picking up the teen-ager near his home. Parrish has said both men were drunk and had joked with friends at a party that they were going to find pretty lovers. They were ``sexual predators'' who were ``trolling the streets of Laurel, looking for an individual to pick up,'' he said during opening statements Tuesday. Parrish is fighting to use the results of HIV tests on the victims as part of McClendon's defense. Results of the tests have not been made public. Prosecutors claim McClendon is a troubled youth who stole $100 from the victims before he killed them. District Attorney Jeannene Pacific said the night of the killings, McClendon and a friend were approached by Shoemake and Walters and offered money to accompany the two. The friend refused, but McClendon accepted and got into the men's car ``on his own free will under no duress,'' she said. Later, McClendon bragged to friends that he had killed ``two white guys,'' and calmly played cards, Pacific said. S. CHRISTOPHER HAGIN | The Pledge of Allegance says: Atlanta 1996 | "With liberty and justice for ALL" chagin@mindspring.com | What part of ALL do you not understand? HATE IS NOT A FAMILY VALUE