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Source: Milwaukee Journal SentinelJuly 16--Darius Simmons' mother testified Tuesday afternoon that she watched from her front porch as John Henry Spooner gunned down her son.self storage"As I turned around, Mr. Spooner was standing there in front of Darius," Patricia Larry said. "He got a gun and he pointed it at Darius."She said Spooner, 76, demanded that Simmons put his hands up, and the 13-year-old Darius complied. Larry said she asked the defendant why "he had that gun on (her) baby.""He told Darius that he's going to teach him not to steal," she said. "And he shot him.""I ran off the porch to my son," she said. "I checked for a pulse. I checked both of his wrists. He didn't have a pulse so I went to his neck, and it was very faint... I pulled up his shirt and I could see that he had a bullet hole."She said her son was unarmed and did nothing to provoke Spooner.The trial opened Tuesday with opening statements from prosecutors and the defense lawyers, noting the defense is not contesting the fact that Spooner shot the Simmons on the sidewalk in front of their homes on the city's south side.What is in dispute is why Spooner, who is white, did so, and whether he was in a mental condition to be held responsible for killing Simmons, who is black.That was the question at the center of opening statements delivered Tuesday in the Milwaukee County Circuit Court trial of Spooner on the charge of first-degree intentional homicide.Spooner admitted to shooting his next-door neighbor, saying in statements to police on the scene that he had reached a "breaking point" after his house was burglarized two days earlier. He suspected his teenage neighbor of carrying out the heist and gunned him down in front of his mother, who watched from the porch as Spooner shot her son from five feet away."The best piece of evidence you're going to see in this case is the murder," Assistant District Attorney Mark Williams said, referring to a videotape of the May 31, 2012, incident that left Simmons dead. "You're going to see the terror in Darius' face and you're going to see how cold-blooded and callous Mr. Spooner was. It's not TV, it's not the movies -- you're going to see the actual homicide on video."Tuesday afternoon, the prosecution displayed that evidence -- a video recording of the encounter between the defendant and the victim in front of their homes and the subsequent shooting -- recorded on one of Spooner's private surveillance cameras.Simmons is the first to enter the frame, seen moving a garbage receptacle around the sidewalk. Spooner then exits his front door and confronts his neighbor. As he brandishes his weapon, Simmons backpedals and Spooner shoots him. The victim then takes off running in the opposite direction, as the defendant takes another shot at him, this time from behind.When Williams displayed a photo of the victim's gunshot wound, Simmons' brother Theodore Larry and another family member left the courtroom in anguish. Simmons' mother, Patricia Larry, watched the proceedings Tuesday from the front row of the courtroom gallery.Theodore Larry said Tuesday afternoon he came downstairs on the morning of May 31, 2012, to find his mother in the frame of the front door, with Spooner pointing a gun at the doorway."I've never seen my mom like that," Theodore Larry recalled on the witne迷你倉s stand in the first day of testimony in Spooner's trial. "My mom told me (Spooner) had shot my little brother. She said 'you ain't going out there.'"Larry said he he ran out of his back door and found his brother lying on the curb. He was crying as he took his lifeless brother in his arms, he said.Spooner's attorney, Franklyn Gimbel, said he would not dispute the prosecution's factual narrative but would question whether his client truly had the intent to kill the victim.If convicted of homicide, Spooner will enter a plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. In addition to alleged mental illness, the 76-year-old is in poor physical shape, suffering from pneumonia, Gimbel said."What you will have to decide is whether the behavior of John Spooner was such that he had the intent to kill this young man," Gimbel said in his opening remarks Tuesday morning. "He did not."Following opening statements, the prosecution began calling witnesses, including Milwaukee police officers, neighbors who had witnessed the killing and Ald. Bob Donovan.Donovan had a conversation with Spooner over breakfast at George Webb Restaurant the morning of the shooting. At the time, Donovan testified, the defendant expressed dissatisfaction with how the police were handling a burglary of his home, for which he blamed Simmons, and said "there are other ways of handling these things," Donovan said.The trial comes on the heels of the Saturday acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin. Spooner's case has drawn attention for its perceived similarities to the Zimmerman case, in which the neighborhood watchman was alleged to have racially profiled 17-year-old Martin.Jury selection for the Spooner trial focused Monday on eliminating potential jurors whose consideration of the case might be influenced by their reactions to the Zimmerman verdict.Jonathan Safran, a private attorney representing Simmons' family, said he sees a clear "issue of profiling" and a "race component to (the case)," but that important differences distinguish it from the Trayvon Martin case, including the lack of a self-defense claim on Spooner's part.Williams did not focus his questioning Tuesday morning on alleged racial tensions between Spooner and the Simmons family. A number of witnesses did report statements Spooner had made to them about his dissatisfaction with his neighbors.Andrew Kaczecka, a garbage collector for the City of Milwaukee, testified that he had conversed with Spooner on the sidewalk in front of his home on the morning of the shooting."He said that 'the pigs in the neighborhood need to clean up more,'" Kaczecka said.Milwaukee Police officers Richard Martinez and Michael Urbaniak testified that Spooner had admitted to shooting his teenage neighbor when they apprehended him following the incident."He said 'yeah, I shot him,'" Martinez said.Urbaniak testified that the defendant made a number of statements to him on the scene, including acknowledging that "they are going to throw the book at me because I shot the kid," and commenting on his own poor health, saying, "I really don't have much longer to live on this earth."Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Visit the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at www.jsonline.com Distributed by MCT Information Services文件倉