Trial Under Way in Racially Charged Carjacking, Rape and Murder of Knoxville Couple

Fox News ^ | 8/18/09 | Unknown

[Blood of Tyrants]

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Trial is under way in Knoxville for the first of four people charged in the kidnapping, rape and killing of a young couple more than two years ago.

As court convened Monday, the judge read each of the 38 counts against 26-year-old Letalvis Cobbins. His attorney, Scott Green, responded by entering pleas.

Green said his client pleaded guilty to five counts of facilitating robbery or theft in the carjacking that set the crimes into motion in 2007. He also pleaded guilty to one count of rape. To the remaining counts, Green responded "not guilty."

Cobbins — of Lebanon, Ky. — is also charged with murder and kidnapping in the killings of 23-year-old Christopher Newsom and his 21-year-old girlfriend Channon Christian.

When Christopher Newsom's bound, shot and burned body was identified the day after he was killed in 2007, authorities warned his mother the sight would be too gruesome for her to see.

[Popman]

These vermin need to be put to death as quickly as possible.

Police, prosecutors and the victims' families maintain that Newsom and Christian were not victims of a hate crime, rather victims of a carjacking that went terribly awry.

A car jacking gone horribly wrong??? WTH ? How does a car jacking go to this level of evil?

Newsom and Christian were "in the wrong place at the wrong time," Gill said.

So it's their fault?

[Yardstick]

Yes, but you could say the same thing for Nashville: the city proper probably went for Obama and the ‘burbs went for McCain. But are you calling Nashville a liberal cesspool? Noooooo. As for the professors — of course they’re a bunch of libs. But what does that prove? Nothing, that’s what. Fess up MGH — yer just a Bama fan with a grudge ;o)

[Yardstick]

I like Knoxville a lot — just a nice medium-small city with a big university to pull in the cultural stuff. I’ve never been to Austin. In what ways does it remind you of Knoxville? Asheville is hilarious because it’s so totally out of sync with the rest of the region. It’s like someone choppered it in from northern California. And I actually kind of like the quirky hippie vibe.

[MHGinTN]

Naw, don’t carry grudges ... that would be unnecessary weight in life. I live up int eh Tri-Cities, but my hearts in Bama still.

[dschapin]

The only punishment that would really fit the crime comes not from America but from the old Roman Penal Law: Crucifixion

[antisocial]

BTTT

[In God I trust]

I've been a a victim of a bunch of black guys jumping me and beating me and I can tell you that the words white mofo this and white blank blank that were shouted during the whole beating. I don't doubt for one second that that wasn't happening during this horrible, horrible crime. You can't convince me otherwise. I don't care what the police or parents say.

[libstripper]

Since 7 of the 12 jurors are “underprivileged minorities,” there’s an excellent chance that this is an OJ Jury that will let the subhuman off. If not, being 66, I’m reasonably sure he’ll get the needle long after I’m no longer here.

[mojito]

These criminals are not psychopaths. I’m sure they committed many crimes before this one, and many of them against other members of their own race.

The parents and prosecutors and police can tell themselves and the community anything they like.

But the victims here were not just robbed. They were not just shot.

They were tortured to death. And they were tortured because they were white.

[leilani]

Then we are in agreement. The crimes they committed were so extreme in their brutal savagery, the killers were so animalistic in their murderous depradation, that trying to pin the charge of a "hate crime" on their act, which requires us to believe they actually engaged in higher cognitive function while doing it, oddly minimalizes their crime, IMO. It confers upon these animals a deliberate reason, however heinous, to have committed it when I don't think conferring reason upon their senseless barbarity is merited.

And I agree with you "hate crime" prosecutions are stupid. All crimes are hate crimes, then, if we begin asking jurors to play psychic with a defendant's interior motives during a crime's commission, rather than restrict juries to considering concrete evidence when deliberating guilt. I thought most people on FR thought so too. That's why I was rather appalled to see so many people suddenly express their reflexive support for it's implementation in the prosecution of this crime - & not just for the purpose of underscoring its unjustly selective utilisation.

[leilani]

Austin's bigger and more economically diverse, but it's got a lot of the same amenities since it's also a university town (the REAL UT,lol) with a river running through it, lakes nearby etc. Knoxville's greener of course, it's hills are higher and IMO just a very pleasant, beautiful place to live. (But sssshhhh! We don't want word to get out how nice it is lest it really become like Austin- overrun with permanent transplants!)

I too enjoy Asheville's funky mountain town vibe. Only to visit, though. Just not sure I'd want to live next door to smug, sanctimonious lefty wackos who have wrecked their home states and are now trying to do to NC politically the very same things which led to the unliveable conditions which forced them to escape from whence they came! ;-)

[Yardstick]

Well, okay then.

[Yardstick]

Big agree on Knoxville being pleasant and beautiful. It’s my home town and every time I go back I realize how much I like it. And I’m always impressed with how it’s just exploding westward. I lived near West Town Mall when I was a kid (1980s), which used to be way out there. Now that area is west-central practically and Farragut is the new west.

[Toespi]

“there wasn’t any reason to call this a hate crime.”

What the hell do you call it then? Let this happen to a black couple and do not tell me it would not be considered a hate crime. 13.5%..........

[kulot]

I remember this. Even as a person of color, I have a one word remedy:

Ciafu.

An oxygen mask and a CBS TV camera for educational purposes would be a nice additional touch.

[kulot]

Pardon the misspelling: Siafu

[Trailerpark Badass]

It's just speculation on my part, but perhaps this is exactly what led the parents, police & prosecutors to conclude unanimously that it was the victims' late model Toyota 4-runner sticking out like a sore thumb in a derelict neighborhood which attracted these psychotic predators to their victims in the first place.

Or it was the fact that they were white.

I'll even consider that the fact that they were white led the perps to believe they might have more to steal. So while they may not have acted purely out of racial hatred, the victims' race would still be a factor.

And if they were just after the victims' vehicle, why the kidnapping, rape, torture and mutilation?

[leilani]

Well, I don't know. You are asking me to be a psychic & ascribe a motivation to the perpetrators of a crime based on nothing more than a reflexive emotional prejudgement and not on factual evidence.

And that's exactly one of the reasons I think 'hate crime' prosecutions are such a farce when we ask juries to make such a determination.

If it's wrong when we now ask juries to base their verdicts on considerations they have no way of empirically establishing the validity of beyond a reasonable doubt when the perps are white, it's just as wrong when we demand the same charges be presented to the jury when the races are reversed, isn't it?

Or do we conservatives now wish to thow up our hands & legitimize the outrageously unjust politicization of criminal procedings which 'hate crime' prosecutions indisputably are when they ask juries to return verdicts based not on concrete evidence but on raw, kneejerk tribal emotion.

All I'm asking folks here to consider is that if you're now willing to confer legitimacy upon that charge's use here, whether you like it or not, you're in effect willing to confer legitimacy upon its use everywhere else in every other case, and you're saying it's okay for juries everywhere to adjudicate guilt based not on evidence before them, but on what they "think" the perpetrators were probably thinking when they committed the crime, just as some on this thread have suggested they believe they "know" for a fact what those animals' underlying motivations were when we have no way of knowing any such thing!

Do we really want to allow juries to continue enjoying the power to do that? Is that wise?

[leilani]

They were tortured to death. And they were tortured because they were white.

And they told you that?

Or are you making an assumption?

Do you also think black jurors should feel free to deliver 'hate crime' verdicts based, not on the rational analysis of the concrete evidence before them, but just on their own individual emotion-based assumptions on what white defendants might have been thinking before they committed their crimes too?

[Theophilus]

That’s a lot of freakin’ work. Why not just bust a cap in the fool’s ah, face?

Sure, that would be better if you can get the draw on him/them.