Desolating news from Knoxville atrocity trial

David B. writes:

The jury just gave Cobbins life without parole. At Twitter, reporter Jamie Satterfield said that the jury decided “mitigation outweighed the heinous nature of the crime.” I was afraid that a Nashville jury would not give a death sentence and it turned out that way. It sometimes happens that they will say they would vote death in voir dire, but not do it when the time comes.

LA to David:

Tell me the grounds again for moving the trial from Knoxville to Nashville?

David replies:

The judge ruled that an impartial jury could not be found in Knox County because of all the publicity. Judge Baumgartner decided on Davidson County (Nashville). One reason he gave was “similar demographics,” which is a lie. Davidson is 26 percent black to nine percent for Knox. The jury was selected in Nashville and bussed to Knoxville.

Several jurors probably would not vote for death period. The rest wanted to go home.

LA replies:

I feel terrible.

David replies:

You will remember that late last week I was worried about even a guilty verdict. I would have taken life without parole (LWOP) last Friday. I got my hopes up on Saturday. I should have remained pessimistic.

- end of initial entry -

Marco Jawsario writes:

May I remind my amigos at VFR what some have said before at this blog—“Now we see why the whites of yesteryear preferred lynch mob justice.”

LA replies:

Readers please note: As I have said about similar remarks at VFR in the past, Mr. Jawsario’s comment, and my posting of it, do not signify an endorsement of lynchings. His point is that in the past Southern whites had a realistic understanding of the dangers that they faced from black savagery (also note, I am not saying that blacks as such are savages, I am saying that black savagery exists), and lynchings were part of the way whites protected themselves from those dangers. I am not defending lynchings at all; they also were savage and evil. But I do say that white Americans in their overreaction to the racial wrongs of the past have completely removed any awareness of the dangers they face from black racial violence and have made themselves suicidally vulnerable to it.

Mark P. writes:

Shame about that verdict … but I am curious … Isn’t Tennessee a “concealed carry” state? As a rule, I would never go anywhere in a concealed carry state without a gun.

Btw, according to this site, you can own the following weapons in Tennessee:

Machine Guns Silencers Any Other Weapon (AOW) Destructive Devices (DD) Short Barreled Shotguns (SBS) Short Barreled Rifles (SBR)

There is no excuse not to be well armed in a Southern state wherever you go.

LA replies:

The male victim, Christopher Newsom, was a young fellow of 23.

Mark P. replies:

Can’t a 23-year-old carry a gun?

LA replies:

You know what I meant. He was a young, naive fellow, the last person in the world to think of carrying a weapon.

Mark P. replies:

Ah…yes…liberalism strikes again.

LA replies:

Touche

Mark replies:

I’m not kidding. A gun and situational awareness goes a long way.

LA replies:

I know you weren’t kidding. In my posted version of our exchange, I changed my last reply from “LOL” to “Touche.”

Mark replies:

But “LOL” is funnier.

I should have used an emoticon or something because I laughed when I wrote that.

David B. writes:

You wrote: “You know what I meant. He was a young, naive fellow, the last person in the world to think of carrying a weapon.”

You can tell from his photos what Chris Newsom was like. They were from the West Knoxville suburbs which are as white a place as there is.

Knoxville has a small downtown of the main law offices, banks, and government buildings. Most everything else is from Cumberland Ave which becomes Kingston Pike and on west to where Channon and Chris lived. The University of Tennessee at Cumberland, the restaurants (they went to one that night), movie theaters, book stores, are off Kingston. You see overwhelmingly white people in these areas. The two victims felt safe living in Knoxville among friends and family. They had a false sense of security, I believe. I have written at VFR before that Knoxville did not have the “big city danger” feel of Nashville. I expect it does now.

However, East Knoxville is the black section and it starts abruptly. You can be in a white area and one block away is the black area. They were abducted from the Washington Ridge Apartments which in the daytime looks like a place for white yuppies, and is about 20 minutes drive from their homes, but is right next to where East Knoxville begins. Channon’s best friend was living there. Sometime that night, 2 or 3 armed black men pointed guns at them in the parking lot and forced them into her SUV. The Chipman St. House was 3.5 miles away.

In any town, large or small, there is a class of people you do not see in the middle of the day. A whole class of people is out and about after around 8 PM and especially 10 PM. They are in their holes during daytime and come out at night. When they come out, they come into the “safe” areas of town and can be scouting around a place like the Washington Ridge Apartments.

LA replies:

Yes, coming out at night from their hidden lairs, exactly like the Morlocks in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine.

(Yes, I know, the analogy of black predators to Morlocks and of naive whites to Eloi is not perfect, because in H.G. Wells the Morlocks, though beastly and cannibalistic, are the more intelligent race that’s in control, and the Eloi are brainless. But the analogy is close enough to very useful.)

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 26, 2009 08:01 PM | Send