19 Years to Life Given to Killer in Hate Crime

A Huntington Beach man who claims he has renounced his white supremacist beliefs was sentenced Friday to 19 years to life in prison after relatives of the African American man he murdered unleashed their pain over a crime that left an “ugly scar” in their hearts and community.

“You act like you’re the Ku Klux Klan, killing black people,” La Verne Clark, the victim’s former wife, told 20-year-old Jonathan Kinsey. “You need to go straight to hell and burn.”

Kinsey pleaded guilty in March to second-degree murder and the commission of a hate crime for the shooting death of Vernon Flournoy, a 44-year-old stranger that Kinsey and an acquaintance accosted outside a fast-food restaurant.

Kinsey sat silently in court Friday as tearful family members of his victim stepped forward to demand the harshest sentence possible.

“Vernon, my husband, was murdered because he was a black man,” said Sharon Flournoy. “He was made to fight for his life, then beg for his life, just because he was a black man.”

The victim’s two daughters, standing side by side before the judge, echoed the sentiments of other family members when they said they wished Kinsey could be executed for his crime.

“What do we say to the grandchildren of a man who was murdered because he was a black man, no other reason?” said Tammy Flournoy, the victim’s 25-year-old daughter.

In handing down the sentence, Superior Court Judge Robert R. Fitzgerald expressed skepticism about whether Kinsey had renounced his white supremacist views, as the defendant had told a probation officer preparing his pre-sentencing report.

Kinsey, a high school dropout who sports several white-power tattoos, told the probation officer he was remorseful and admitted his actions were “stupid,” although he insisted he was not motivated by racial hatred. He said he was drunk at the time of the Sept. 15, 1994 attack, and easily agitated, according to the pre-sentencing report.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jim Tanizaki contended the fatal confrontation was racially motivated, and that Kinsey and his accomplice--both of whom the prosecutor described as racist skinheads--blocked the victim’s path to provoke a fight.

When Flournoy, who had three children and three grandchildren, refused to back down, Kinsey pulled a gun and fired.

A mortally wounded Flournoy, a refrigeration technician, stumbled into a McDonald’s restaurant for help, while his two assailants fled to a nearby townhome.

Sharon Flournoy said her husband had been weakened by a heart attack a year earlier, and needed to walk each day to build strength. They had moved to Huntington Beach from Hollywood after the 1992 Los Angeles riots to get away from urban troubles.

“I cannot begin to tell you how devastating this murder has been to me,” she told the judge. “I still hear the echoes of his children crying beside his coffin.”

Families of both defendants also cried during the hearing. “I feel for everybody,” said Rhody Kennedy, Kinsey’s mother.

Sentencing for Kinsey’s accomplice, Robert Wofford, was postponed until Aug. 2. Wofford, who was 17 at the time of the crime, was convicted by a jury in March of second-degree murder and a hate crime. He was tried as an adult, but will be sent for an evaluation to determine if he could be eligible for a sentence at the California Youth Authority.

Kinsey, the father of a toddler son, also has pleaded guilty to felony charges stemming from two separate shooting attacks on two Latino men. His punishment on those charges will run at the same time he serves the sentence for the second-degree murder conviction.