Thread: Prosecutors to seek death penalty for alleged killer of...

Prosecutors to seek death penalty for alleged killer of football standout Jamiel Shaw

August 26, 2009 | 11:58 am

The Los Angeles County district attorney's office will seek the death penalty against the 20-year-old gang member charged with killing 17-year-old high school foootball star Jamiel Shaw.

Shaw was several doors from his Arlington Heights home on March 2, 2008, when two men in a car pulled up next to him, asked him if he belonged to a gang and then shot him when he apparently didn't answer, authorities say.

Days later, police arrested the suspected trigger man, Pedro Espinoza, an 18th Street gang member. Espinoza is awaiting trail after being charged with murder with special circumstances in the killing.

Espinoza had been released from the Los Angeles County jail on a gun-related charge the day before Shaw was killed.

The district attorney's office said a committee made up of about a dozen prosecutors determined that the death penalty was appropriate in the case after weighing aggravating circumstances against those that might lessen the charges.


The killing has sparked calls for the community to stop gang violence as well as set off debate about Los Angeles Police Department policy that prohibits officers from from stopping or questioning people solely about their immigration status.


Shaw's parents backed a failed petition drive aimed at getting a law passed that would allow police to arrest illegal-immigrant gang members solely for being in the country illegally and hand them over to federal authorities.

--Andrew Blankstein

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com

Maybe they will deport his dead body after he is executed....?

Pffft

The kid would still be alive if Government did its job and protected its citizens.

He must be from South America because as we all KNOW Mexico doesn't allow the death penalty and THEIR LAW supersedes ours.