Thomas J. Boykin feared for his life and fired in self-defense when he fatally shot another student this year inside Ballou Senior High School, Boykin's lead defense lawyer told jurors at the start of the teenager's trial yesterday.
By conceding that Boykin fired the gun that killed James Richardson, 17, the defense has staked its case on convincing the jury that he was the victim and Richardson the aggressor Feb. 2 at the Southeast Washington school.
Thomas J. Boykin, 19, is charged with first-degree murder.
(Family Photo)
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"Thomas Boykin is not a murderer," Gladys Weatherspoon of the D.C. Public Defender Service told the jury. "Thomas Boykin defended himself."
The defense version of events was in stark contrast to the roles sketched out only a few minutes earlier by Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Pfleger in D.C. Superior Court. In his opening statement, Pfleger spoke of Boykin "hunting" his "prey."
Richardson, known as J-Rock, was from Condon Terrace, and Boykin, known as T.J., was from Barry Farm, two Southeast neighborhoods riven by a decades-old rivalry. Boykin, Pfleger said, had felt humiliated by Richardson and others from Condon Terrace, and his frustration had been building.
One of the prosecution's first witnesses was a school security guard who testified that Boykin told him last fall, "They gonna stop playin' with me," after a confrontation between students from Condon Terrace and Barry Farm.
It was the first warning of what was to come, Pfleger said. A cafeteria melee several weeks later was the biggest flare-up -- until the morning of Feb. 2, when, according to prosecutors, Boykin and two other students from Barry Farm went looking for Richardson.
A standout running back for Ballou, Richardson seemed to be struggling off the football field. He should have been a junior but was still a freshman, having twice failed to advance to the next grade. A girlfriend had obtained a court order to keep them apart. And he was very much caught up in the Condon Terrace-Barry Farm rivalry, so much so that a gang counselor at Ballou sought to have him transferred to another school.
But he was a gifted football player. That, it appears, kept him on the team, despite grades that could have made him ineligible, and kept him at Ballou, despite dangers that eventually cost him his life.
Boykin, now 19, has been jailed since the shooting, charged with first-degree murder and other offenses. His trial is likely to be loaded with emotion.
Yesterday, Richardson's mother, Michelle Richardson-Patterson, wept on the witness stand as she identified photographs of her son. In the next several days, the jury will hear from students and others who were in the crowded hallway as the gunfire rang out.
Prosecutors said the trouble began with a confrontation and taunt and ended in chaos and bloodshed.
After searching the school for Richardson, Boykin and the two friends from Barry Farm found him, laughing and chatting with a girl outside the cafeteria, Pfleger said. Boykin mocked Richardson's laugh, and Richardson responded, Pfleger said.
"You pretty," Richardson told Boykin, according to prosecutors.
Boykin laid into Richardson with a big punch. Richardson, who had marijuana and ecstasy in his system, was floored by the blow, Pfleger said. A brawl ensued.
Pfleger and co-counsel Catherine Motz said that in the midst of the fight, Boykin drew a semiautomatic pistol, which he had in his coat pocket. "You think I'm playin'?" Boykin said, according to Pfleger. As Richardson tried to retreat, Boykin fired five times, striking Richardson and another student, who survived, Pfleger said,
Weatherspoon and co-counsel Janet Mitchell countered that Boykin was the one in peril at that moment and for weeks before. The expulsion of several Barry Farm students earlier in the school year had made Boykin an easy target for harassment by students from Condon Terrace, they said.
"Every day he went to school, every time he left his house, he had to ask himself, 'Is this the day? Is this the day they're going to get me?' " Weatherspoon said.
Far from having the upper hand in the fight, Boykin was being beaten by Richardson, Weatherspoon said. Boykin, she said, could only think, "This was the day they were going to get him."
