Uncommon Injustice
November 11, 2007
Dr. Noel Chua and Renato Hughes, currently languishing in prison cells in Camden County, Ga., and Lake County, Calif., share an uncommon misfortune. Both Filipino Americans were charged with murder under a seldom-used legal doctrine dating back to common law rule in 12th century England.
Under this arcane law, a person can be charged with murder when a victim dies accidentally, or unintentionally, during the course of a felony.
This law has been abolished in most democratic countries, which consider it unduly harsh to require no intent to kill for someone to be sentenced to death or life imprisonment.
Chua, an internal medicine specialist, was charged with violating Georgia’s Controlled Substance Act and thereby causing the death of his patient, Jamie Carter III. According to the district attorney, at least 10 drugs were found in Carter’s system, some of which were prescribed by Chua.
The district attorney charged Chua with two murder counts and a racketeering count that allowed the D.A. to seize all of Chua’s assets.
In October, the all-white jury found Chua guilty and sentenced him to “life imprisonment plus five years.”
The same month that Carter died, Renato Hughes and Christian Foster went to visit their friend Rashad Williams in Clear Lake.
The three pals decided to buy some marijuana from the home of Shannon Edmonds, a known marijuana grower.
While Hughes waited outside, Williams and Foster went inside Edmonds’ house.
It is not clear what happened next; Edmonds alleged the boys invaded his home to steal his marijuana, so he shot them in self-defense (Williams was shot twice in the back; Foster five times in the back).
The district attorney accepted Edmonds’ version and charged Hughes with the double murder of his friends under the felony murder doctrine, as their deaths occurred in the course of committing a felony, an armed home invasion, with special circumstance punishable by death if convicted.
Kenneth Block, a track and field coach at San Francisco’s Balboa High School who knew all three boys, is outraged that Edmonds was not the one charged with murder. “He took two boys’ lives, and now he wants to take the third one. Where is justice in that?” he said.
While this case has attracted widespread attention in the African American community, it has received scant coverage among Filipino Americans (Hughes is Filipino and black).
Hughes’ jury trial is set to begin on Nov. 6 in Lake County, which has a 75 percent white population and hardly any Asians. Will Hughes suffer the same fate as Chua?
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com.
Comments
13 Responses to “Uncommon Injustice”
Got something to say?
Folks:
Most of you are far too young to remember something like “Prohibition.”
Said sociocultural no-no was set into the concrete of “law” and provided the nation with the spectacle of rum-runners ans speakeasys and the rise of the American Mafia, whatever the ethnicity.
Today, “medical” marijuana provides any number of decently-paid, I trust, agents and enforcers of the public weal with similar caveat to confront the ILlegal “drug” dealers, as opposed to the legitimate kind under the benevolent eye of the FDA, and, in the process, a substantial, majority?, of malcontents and miscreants off the urban streets and country byways and into overpopulated prison cells.
I think it was one of Dickenses’ everlovin’ “characters,” in “Bleak House”?, who uttered the immortal line:
THE LAW IS A ASS.
As it was then, so it is today, here and elsewhere, where the “law:” is what the rich and powerful say it is, Musharraf? A Bush who, er, ah, proclaims to undergrads, I read this somewhere on the internet, “my job” is to iterate, over and over, “the truth,” until it becomes proper “propaganda.” Ah, Dr. Goebbels lives, in the tongue-tied presence of Mr. Malaprop.
Whatever, Balboa coach, stay outraged.
You too, Rodel Rudis.
And good luck to you, Dr. Chua. You didn’t. by any chance?, prescribe for Rush, I hope.
Frank Eng
Dr Chua may have been a good doctor, but he badly mismanaged this case by prescribing the wrong medications for migraines with narcotics, and in excessive doses. He also committed ethical lapses in judgment and his license should have been suspended.
Maybe his lawyer should have tried to get a plea bargain for him, since Mr Carter’s death was not intentional. The jury voted based on the information given. Let’s not make this into a racial issue.
Victoria:
I agree.
Let’s leave “race” out of this.
And, in the “court” of “public opinion,” “test” ALL the “evidence” herein, PLUS the sentences handed out.
Life imprisonment PLUS five years for what you deem bad judgment and poorer “prescriptions”?
Which of the dozen drugs in Carter’s cadaver were “prescribed: and which otherwise?
A recommendation of license suspension may be in order? But a life sentence plus five? Is that with or withsout leg shackles?
I have always advocated staying the Hell away from domestic OR overseas “spy” agencies. Must I now add the medical profession? Whencever the diploma on the office wall.
Oh, and is there a law on the books, arcane or not, that forebids askance at authority and power and puissance of arms and persuasion? Bullying or swiftboating?
Fra nk Eng
Gentlefolk:
Okay, no one asked, but this headline-follower feels the urgent need to speak up, anyway, and “Uncommon Injustice:” seems a perfect rubric and a suitable springboard.
In re the Yang/Yahoo-Congresss-human rights spitball fight of recent days:
Question 1: How can a “foreign” entity, no matter how rich or how useful?, force the cadres to conform?
2: Can anyone vouch for better oversight here at home over BigBro and Verizon? access to “private” interchanges AND records?
3: Congressman Lantos: As chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, why have you not initiated an inquiry into AIPAC and its power over American foreign policy, especially in the Middle East?
4: If Jerry Yang is, indeed, a “moral pygmy,” what, pray tell is Dubya? An “amoral” Gargantua?
5: Finally, just exactly how many dollars and how many senses can be applied to the sliding scale of political chicanery and political sleight-of-hand, whichever “side” one professes or actually believes in?
And, finally, and most to the point:
On the issue of “censorship,” check today’s online “Democratic Party” posting on the new flick,
“Redacted,” which, reportedly, sent Bill O”Reilly into a frenzy of personal injunction AND threat.
Frank Eng
P.S.: The last is a perfecto tie-in to the ongoing dereliction of duty on the part of the so-called “mainstream” press and media.
P.P.S.: Where ARE you, Christian, and Captain Obvious and swiftboaters anonymous?
Mr. Rodis writes, in regard to the Clearlake home invasion shooting, that “It is not clear what happened next” inside the Edmonds house. However, in relating the story, Mr. Rodis conveniently leaves out one thing that clearly happened, which the Associated Press even mentioned (albeit in paragraph 20 of its story that it circulated today, November 15): the homeowner’s stepson was beaten with a baseball bat by the robbers, to the point where he’s currently in a care facility with brain damage, unable to feed himself. But Mr. Rodis, and the robbers’ track and field coach, don’t seem to think that he’s worth mentioning. Very interesting.
I notice this account of the Ronato Hughes case omits the fact the homeowner’s son was beaten with a baseball bat during the robbery, causing brain damage. The son lives in a rehabilitation center, and can no longer feed himself. Break into someone’s home at 4 am, and beat their child with a baseball bat? Expect to get shot, and consider yourself lucky if you only get life in prison.
Kerry M
Folks:
Ah, Kerry Maxwell and Alex, the Associated Press, depending on which of their reporters in the field is reporting, is one of the last remaining redoubts of the great American press. I omit media, because that adjunct is a sorry excuse for reportage.
Clear Lake should remain steadfast in its assay of the “facts,” and, if, indeed, Shannon Edmondses’ stepson was brain-damaged in a savage attack, then, has he not already vengeance in the two “invaders” shot, how mahy times?, in the back?
Hughes, if the report is correct, was waiting outside, and his presence there should be punishable.
But has anyone noted that Edmonds was a “dealer” in a forbidden substance?, and, as such, was he not also a “bait” for the sociocultural “trap” of punishable offenses?
The whole episode smacks of this nation’s hypocritical and cynical AND brutal exploitation of existing “law” and a total lack of “order.”
Order exists, one hopes, when fairness and justice exists in “society,” such as it is, human nature being what it is, but look you, consider today”s miniheadline in these pages about an octogenarian immigrant caught cutting a friend’s hair in a hole-in-the-wall Powell Street “salon.”
I remember well such establishments.
But, today’s “economy,” have you shopped for the daily necessities of late in your local supermarket?, that is, if there is one in your neighborhood or you can reach one?
San Francisco, OR California, minions of the respective bureaucracies should, properly, be ashamed of themselves for THIS “incident.”
Yes, “poisons” in cosmetics, like those in “toys” and in our food chains, should be publicized, and the perpetrators thereof pilloried, well, “outed.”
That said, I can only add that a five-buck haircut is something even I can afford, hairline almost nonexistent as it is.
But, docking an octogenarian who doesn’t quite speak the lingo as she is bespoke in four figures, equal to her monthly Social Insecurity stipend, is, to me, SHAMEFUL.
Not to mention idiotic.
By the way, the cosmetic gendarmes didn’t mention whether the culprit dipped the scissors in alcohol before she snipped.
Yeah, the “law” is indeed “a ass.”
In spades.
Frank Eng
This article is incredibly biased. The thugs beat the homeowners stepson with a baseball bat. The stepson now has brain damage.
An honest reporter would mention that. A biased reporter picks and chooses his facts.
Why do minority reporters and advocates always seem to need to paint a picture where the assailant is the victim? You might get the support of non-minorities were you to occasionally acknowledge that there can actually be minorities that DO commit crimes, and SHOULD be punished.
How could you have possibly left out the fact that they invaded the home at 4 in the morning and nearly beat the shooter’s son to death?
Rodel is a hack. A biased mouthpiece. A disgrace.
Dear Mike S. and Jerry:
Yes, a criminal is a criminal and a crook a crook, whatever the race, creed, or color.
But, please, get off our backs. I mean everyone else’s but your own, whatever YOUR
Whatever YOUR race, creed, or color.
And why are you guys always semi-named or pseudonamed, as in are you for real? Or just a figment of some jerk’s unfertile projections?
Maybe another Rovian instigator? Hater/baiter?
I can conceive of no other “scenario,” as in “talking points” and spinmeisters.
You insist that readers? of AsianWeek are less than YOU?
God!, I hope not.
Frank Eng
[…] in the back while fleeing or while attacking Edmonds’ stepson. From several accounts, Hughes (who is black and Filipino) never entered the home, but he was the get-away driver. Depending on which account you believe, […]
[…] the homeowner’s son was beaten with a baseball bat during the robbery, causing brain damage (“Uncommon Injustice,” Rodel Rodis, Nov. 9). The son lives in a rehabilitation center and can no longer feed himself. […]