Boy, 13, Cleared in Slaying of Watts Activist

One year after he was publicly branded a killer by then-Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams, a 13-year-old boy was cleared Wednesday of involvement in the shooting death of Watts activist Viola McClain.

Without hearing any formal defense presentation, Superior Court Judge Cecil Mills ruled that authorities had failed to prove their contention that the youth, then 11, was one of two teenagers responsible for McClain’s death as they attempted to shoot her grandson.

“The court has no comfort level that the evidence against [the 13-year-old] rises above a reasonable doubt,” Mills said in a Juvenile Court proceeding in Downey.

With that, Mills set a Sept. 17 date for sentencing the youth on an earlier conviction of participating in the gang rape of a 13-year-old girl just before the shooting. That sexual assault occurred in an abandoned duplex next door to the house where McClain, 82, was fatally shot on her front porch on July 26, 1996.

Prosecutors say he could be sent to the California Youth Authority for years for the rape--but by law must be released by age 25.

The judge’s ruling still leaves a 16-year-old facing charges of murdering the Watts grandmother and of killing 24-year-old Patrick Birdsong two weeks earlier. As in McClain’s case, authorities allege that the 16-year-old was firing at another male when he shot and killed Birdsong as he left his apartment in the Nickerson Gardens housing development.

The dismissal of charges against the 13-year-old brought a grateful response from his attorney and his mother, who broke into tears outside the small courtroom.

“I’m happy, real happy,” said the defendant’s mother, who like her son was not identified by The Times because he is a juvenile. “I always knew my son would not do anything like that.”

Added defense attorney Dwight Pearson: “From Day 1, our position has been that he is innocent . . . and after I heard the testimony presented [by the prosecution] it was so obvious that it wasn’t my client who was involved in [the slaying].”

To the contrary, Pearson maintained, prosecution witnesses offered conflicting testimony about which of several youths on the street that night fired at McClain’s grandson after a confrontation.

“I feel like the police relied on one witness who admitted in court that she lied about my client being involved in the case,” Pearson said, referring to the testimony of the 13-year-old rape victim who in testimony this week recanted an earlier statement indicating that she saw the youth shoot McClain.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Eleanor Hunter and the two LAPD homicide detectives assigned to the case disputed Pearson’s theory, noting that the girl’s testimony during the earlier rape trial had helped prove that the youth was armed with a gun when he and at least five others sexually assaulted her. All six have been found responsible for the rape, but no one has yet been convicted of the subsequent shooting.

“We truly still believe that he fired the first gunshot [at McClain’s grandson],” Hunter said.

But proving that allegation became virtually impossible, said Hunter and police Dets. Bill Smith and Dan Jenks, because a key prosecution witness--who initially identified the youth from a photo lineup--picked out the older teenager in court this week when he was asked to identify the shooter.

The confusion over what occurred and the difficulty in obtaining testimony was apparent throughout the trial. On Wednesday, two prosecution witnesses who claimed to have overheard incriminating statements by the defendants offered no such proof when they took the stand. One repeatedly denied or said he could not recall earlier statements, and the other invoked his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination.

In the end, the youth’s mother and his attorney said the judge’s actions proved that authorities had wrongly charged him in their rush to bring someone to justice for McClain’s killing.

“They said my boy was a murderer,” the youth’s mother said. “They didn’t know who did it . . . so they just picked [him].”

Added Pearson: “They have told so many lies about this boy that it is just amazing . . . [and] as a black man, I get so tired of seeing the black kids of South-Central just being railroaded through the system and charged with crimes they did not commit.”

But Hunter and the detectives disputed Pearson’s contention that the youth was arrested in a rush to judgment.

“I don’t know how it could be a rush to judgment . . . when everything we did [before the arrest] had judicial approval,” Jenks said.

Added Hunter: “The most tragic thing about this is that we had a woman named Viola McClain who by everyone’s account was a well-loved woman in the neighborhood . . . and it’s kind of sad that with all the kids we know were on the street that night, that they didn’t come forward and that their parents didn’t drag them forward” to tell what happened.