Jury selection is scheduled to get under way next month in the murder trial of Brandon McInerney, who is charged with the execution style killing of a gay classmate in 2008.
McInerney is charged with killing 15-year-old classmate Lawrence King execution style during a computer lab class Feb. 12, 2008, at E.O. Green School in Oxnard, Calif.
McInerney also is charged with a hate crime because he allegedly had adopted white supremacist views and King had identified himself as gay.
A police gang expert testified in a 2009 preliminary hearing that white supremacists consider gay people enemies of the white race.
McInerney, now 17, faces as much as 53 years to life in prison if convicted of all charges in adult court. Prosecutors have offered a sentence of 25 years to life if he pleads guilty to first-degree murder and the hate-crime allegation.
The two boys had been sparring in the days before the killing, allegedly because King had expressed a romantic interest in McInerney, who was 14 at the time.
McInerney, who is being tried as an adult, allegedly shot King in the back of the head.
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