What might have been a routine preliminary hearing in the Oxnard, CA, trial of 14-year-old Brandon McInerney became newsworthy yesterday when Brandon’s father moved to fire the public defender representing him and bring in criminal lawyers from LA.
You’ll recall that McInerney is being prosecuted as an adult for first-degree murder and a hate crime in the Feb. 12 killing of his classmate, Larry King, 15, who sometimes wore makeup and told friends he was gay.
The public defender, William “Willy” Quest, objected and asked that the judge name a “guardian ad litem.” Michael Mehas, a writer following the case, interviewed Quest outside the courthouse:
Q: What was your motion regarding the proposed change in attorneys?
A: To have a guardian ad litem appointed to see if this is in the best interests of Brandon. We have concerns, obviously, given the nature of this case whether this is in the best interest of Brandon. […]
Q: And who is the United Defense Group?
A: As far as I know, they offered to defend him for one dollar… I don’t know their retainer agreement. I haven’t seen it. But that’s my concern. I think they represented Alvarez, the guy who did the Metrolink for two months – for publicity – and they dumped it. So I think that’s what’s going to happen (in this case). I don’t know this firm. I’ve never seen them. They never operated here in Ventura, as far as I know.
Q: And you were informed yesterday.
A: I had an idea over the weekend. And then I was notified yesterday. I talked to the father on Sunday.
A second part of the interview is here. Quest makes a compelling case that he is acting in McInerney’s best interest:
Q: What kind of resources has your office already expended on this case?
A: I’ve expended over a thousand hours on this case, drafting seven motions, with a whole host of experts, a whole host of investigation, and my investigation team has done over 400 hours. So, just cost, if you had a private firm I don’t want to even come up with the numbers of what that is. But it has been an enormous amount of expenditure. And only someone who is very wealthy or the public defender can basically do those types of expenditures. […]
Q: In a thousand hours of work how many documents have you accrued?
A: Well, the discovery from just the district attorney is close to 2,700 pages. And that’s just the discovery the DA has provided. Now there’s also over 17 CDs, DVDs, all those have interviews. We’ve listened to all of those. This is not a case you can just zip in and zip out… This is an extremely witness-intensive case. It happened at a school. There’s a lot of people there. This is a case where the backgrounds of both these individuals is very important. Because Brandon just turned fourteen. Larry King, unfortunately, was just fifteen. This is a very sad tragedy, but, as I’ve said before, I don’t believe Brandon is some crazy killer… Unfortunately, this has happened in other schools. For example, the Virginia Tech incident. There was a history here, a background that has to be gotten into. And if you’re going to represent Brandon you have to understand that in a very detailed manner.
A hearing on the guardian ad litem matter is set for Oct. 14.