    
Serenasailor
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Serenasailor
Post Number: 141
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - 05:54 pm: | 
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GAFFNEY -- The nation will have a chance to see the state's case against five Spartanburg County teenagers charged with a racially motivated attack when Court TV airs coverage of the trial next week.
Prosecutors have accused the white teens of attacking a 16-year-old black youth as he walked home from a friend's house in the Grassy Pond community on July 7.
The cable television network, which offers crime and court programming to an estimated 85 million viewers, will be in Gaffney Monday to cover the trial.
Lucas Elliott Grice, Christopher Scott Cates, Justin Ashley Phillips, Jerry Christopher Toney and Kenneth Eugene Miller, all of Spartanburg County, were charged with second-degree lynching after police said they attacked Gaffney High School senior Isaiah Clyburn. The attack, detectives said, was racially motivated.
The defendants will be tried together.
The case first received national attention this past summer when the Rev. Jesse Jackson asked for federal prosecutors to consider handling the case. State and federal prosecutors reviewed the case and determined it would be better handled in the state court system.
After the assault, hundreds of online messages were posted on the Herald-Journal's Web discussion list, mostly from those outraged by the attack.
Some readers said if the five defendants were black and had attacked a white youth, the charges would have been different and there wouldn't have been news-grabbing headlines. Others said the defendants, if convicted, should receive stiff penalties for such a senseless act.
The teenagers were riding in three trucks along Ellis Ferry Road when one of them yelled a racial
slur at Clyburn, according to Sheriff's Office incident reports.
The trucks turned around, and Cates and Clyburn began arguing and fighting, the reports state. Detectives said the others also participated in the fight with Clyburn, who suffered bruising and internal bleeding before a witness, who was cutting grass at a nearby fire station, called police.
If convicted, the five teens face three to 20 years in prison.
A sixth suspect, Amy Marie Woody, 17, was charged with misprison of a felony after she allegedly concealed information about the attack from police. Her trial will be held at a later date.
Solicitor Trey Gowdy will prosecute the case with Assistant Solicitor Abel Gray.
Clerk of Court Brandy McBee said Court TV correspondents notified her last week of their intention to cover the trial.
This will be the first time the network has covered a trial in Cherokee County. The network came to Spartanburg County for the first time in 2004 when it covered the trial of Marion Lindsey, who was sentenced to death for killing his estranged wife in the parking lot of the Inman Police Department.
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