Deliberations Resume in McInerney Trial      

Jury deliberations in the trial of Brandon McInerney resume Monday following two days of closing arguments and weeks of testimony in a Chatsworth, Calif., courtroom.

The Associated Press reports that the jury of nine women and three men will deliberate for only a few hours Monday because of one juror's prior commitment. McInerney, now 17, is charged with first-degree murder in the 2008 shooting death of Lawrence "Larry" King in nearby Oxnard, though jurors may consider a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.

During closing arguments last week, Ventura County senior deputy district attorney Maeve Fox slammed defense attorney Scott Wippert's case as a textbook "gay panic" strategy. "Even in death," Fox said, "[King] has been degraded and subjected to inappropriate character assassination. No reasonable person of any age would have reacted the way the defendant did."

"You cannot skew the evidence because of sympathy [toward McInerney]," Fox said. "You know what happened in this case. Don't torture it, don't overthink it. An American was executed for who he was. It was a cold-blooded execution."

(Read Advocate.com's coverage of closing arguments here.)