The Bobster
Senior News Editor since 2004
52
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...5-2004Mar5.html
D.C. Student Found at Fault in Slaying
Judge Rejects Self-Defense in Shooting Outside Anacostia High
By Henri E. Cauvin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 6, 2004; Page B02
A 15-year-old who claimed he was frightened and shooting in self-defense when he opened fire outside Anacostia Senior High School last year and struck down a 16-year-old bystander was found yesterday to have committed second-degree murder.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Linda K. Davis rejected the teenager's
contention that he feared for his life, saying that he was not in imminent danger and that the people he opened fire on were fleeing in a car.
The shooting took the life of Devin M. Fowlkes, a star
r
foot
ball player at Anacostia, who was outside the school when the gunfir
e erupted shortly after 3 p.m. Oct. 30. Fowlkes was struck in the chest and pronounced dead less than two hours later, sending the entire school into mourning for the popular student.
Wearing a white T-shirt with her son's face across the front, Fowlkes's mother, Marita Michael, sat in the front row of the courtroom, her lips trembling and her eyes welling up, as Davis announced her decision. Across the courtroom, the family of the 15-year-old also sat in silence, listening to the verdict.
The teenager was charged as a juvenile and could be ordered to spend the next six years, until his 21st birthday, in a juvenile detention facility.
The slaying culminated days of increasingly violent encounters betwee
n the 15-year-old and two other people from the neighborhood. But none of the incidents was reported to police until after Fowlkes was shot, and the judge said yesterday that until the city's chi
ldr
en stop tr
ying to take the law into their own hands and settling scores with guns, the
killings will continue.
"It is up to the young people of this city to take responsibility for their safety and the safety of their friends," Davis said.
Juvenile judicial proceedings are normally closed to the public, and The Washington Post was permitted to attend the trial on the condition that the 15-year-old not be identified.
Afterward, Fowlkes's mother said she hoped that her son's death would awaken the city's young people to the perils of guns. "I would like my son's death to hopefully save other teenagers' lives," she said, as she sat with her husband, Gregory Lee.
The 15-year-old has said that two people in the car he fired on had shot at him
days earlier. On the witness stand Thursday, he testified that he saw one them making a motion as if to fire on him again.
But Davis said she found his earlier, videotaped statement to
police
, in which he w
as adamant that he did not see a gun, more credible than his testimony this week. Evidence introduced during the trial sh
owed that he was not fired on that day, and no gun was recovered from the car or the people in the car, which crashed several blocks away.
Davis said she did not doubt that the teenager was scared of the two people who drove up that afternoon, and with some cause. He had seen a friend beaten up by one of them; he himself been threatened with a shotgun by one of them; and he had been fired on by them while he was driving in a car near school several days earlier.
But what happened that afternoon -- when an older-model white Cadillac pulled up and someone in it perhaps made a menacing gesture -- was hardly sufficient provocation for the gunfire that ensued, Davis s
aid.
"What he did on that day," Davis said, "what he did on Oct. 30, was not a reasonable response to what was happening."
He surrendered a day afte
r the shoot
ing, and after almost
a month of review, the city decided to charge the youth, who had just turned 15, as a juvenile rather than as an adult.
The corporation coun
sel's office, which prosecutes juvenile cases, charged him with first-degree murder in Fowlkes's death. The attorneys for the city, Duane M. Kokesch and Andrew Zirpoli, argued that the teenager had left the school grounds and returned to wait for the people who had been threatening him. "This was a coldhearted, calculated plan by a coward," Kokesch said in his closing argument.
But Davis said she did not find evidence of premeditation.
The teenager's attorneys, Edward Shacklee and Jenifer K. Leaman, both of the D.C. Public Defender Service, had argued that the events leading up to the shooting had planted a cons
uming fear in the mind of their client. "His fear had a tragic consequence, the most tragic consequence, but his fear had some basis," Shacklee said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...5-2004Mar5.html
D.C. Student Found at Fault in Slaying
Judge Rejects Self-Defense in Shooting Outside Anacostia High
By Henri E. Cauvin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 6, 2004; Page B02
A 15-year-old who claimed he was frightened and shooting in self-defense when he opened fire outside Anacostia Senior High School last year and struck down a 16-year-old bystander was found yesterday to have committed second-degree murder.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Linda K. Davis rejected the teenager's
contention that he feared for his life, saying that he was not in imminent danger and that the people he opened fire on were fleeing in a car.
The shooting took the life of Devin M. Fowlkes, a star
r
foot
ball player at Anacostia, who was outside the school when the gunfir
e erupted shortly after 3 p.m. Oct. 30. Fowlkes was struck in the chest and pronounced dead less than two hours later, sending the entire school into mourning for the popular student.
Wearing a white T-shirt with her son's face across the front, Fowlkes's mother, Marita Michael, sat in the front row of the courtroom, her lips trembling and her eyes welling up, as Davis announced her decision. Across the courtroom, the family of the 15-year-old also sat in silence, listening to the verdict.
The teenager was charged as a juvenile and could be ordered to spend the next six years, until his 21st birthday, in a juvenile detention facility.
The slaying culminated days of increasingly violent encounters betwee
n the 15-year-old and two other people from the neighborhood. But none of the incidents was reported to police until after Fowlkes was shot, and the judge said yesterday that until the city's chi
ldr
en stop tr
ying to take the law into their own hands and settling scores with guns, the
killings will continue.
"It is up to the young people of this city to take responsibility for their safety and the safety of their friends," Davis said.
Juvenile judicial proceedings are normally closed to the public, and The Washington Post was permitted to attend the trial on the condition that the 15-year-old not be identified.
Afterward, Fowlkes's mother said she hoped that her son's death would awaken the city's young people to the perils of guns. "I would like my son's death to hopefully save other teenagers' lives," she said, as she sat with her husband, Gregory Lee.
The 15-year-old has said that two people in the car he fired on had shot at him
days earlier. On the witness stand Thursday, he testified that he saw one them making a motion as if to fire on him again.
But Davis said she found his earlier, videotaped statement to
police
, in which he w
as adamant that he did not see a gun, more credible than his testimony this week. Evidence introduced during the trial sh
owed that he was not fired on that day, and no gun was recovered from the car or the people in the car, which crashed several blocks away.
Davis said she did not doubt that the teenager was scared of the two people who drove up that afternoon, and with some cause. He had seen a friend beaten up by one of them; he himself been threatened with a shotgun by one of them; and he had been fired on by them while he was driving in a car near school several days earlier.
But what happened that afternoon -- when an older-model white Cadillac pulled up and someone in it perhaps made a menacing gesture -- was hardly sufficient provocation for the gunfire that ensued, Davis s
aid.
"What he did on that day," Davis said, "what he did on Oct. 30, was not a reasonable response to what was happening."
He surrendered a day afte
r the shoot
ing, and after almost
a month of review, the city decided to charge the youth, who had just turned 15, as a juvenile rather than as an adult.
The corporation coun
sel's office, which prosecutes juvenile cases, charged him with first-degree murder in Fowlkes's death. The attorneys for the city, Duane M. Kokesch and Andrew Zirpoli, argued that the teenager had left the school grounds and returned to wait for the people who had been threatening him. "This was a coldhearted, calculated plan by a coward," Kokesch said in his closing argument.
But Davis said she did not find evidence of premeditation.
The teenager's attorneys, Edward Shacklee and Jenifer K. Leaman, both of the D.C. Public Defender Service, had argued that the events leading up to the shooting had planted a cons
uming fear in the mind of their client. "His fear had a tragic consequence, the most tragic consequence, but his fear had some basis," Shacklee said.