Brown Pleads Guilty To Traffic Circle Murder

In one of the more horrifying local news items of last year, a garden-loving 60-year-old man was beaten to death at a traffic circle in Rainier Beach. The assaulter, Brian Keith Brown, just pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder charge brought against him and will now face sentencing in May. He's probably looking at between eight and eleven years in prison. Last summer he pled not guilty, so the case against him must have been looking particularly strong. We're not shedding any tears for this guy, though.

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By Katelyn in News on March 16, 2009 11:45 AM

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Mike D

I'm with @2.

sevenless

Huh. Well I've only heard the hearsay printed here and wherever, and my knowledge of legal definitions is dubious at best, but I'm still not convinced he committed murder. If that's what they were going to charge him with anyway, why plead guilty? I suppose the time is less that what people are usually sentenced to?

Weazul

I wasn't too sure myself but the simple words seem to make this a case of voluntary manslaughter. I think he feels guilty, he did the whole going and turning to god in fear and turned himself in.. anyway I'm just another useless comment on the web but here is something useful.

Voluntary manslaughter occurs when a person intentionally kills another person after "adequate provocation"; that is, there has been action that was sufficient to incite an "ordinary person" to "sudden and intense passion" such that s/he loses self control. It should be noted that the time between provocation and the killing should not be long enough for the passion to have cooled off.

Involuntary manslaughter generally occurs in only two cases. The first is when someone is killed due to criminal negligence, and the second is when someone is killed during the commission of another crime, where the intent was not to cause bodily injury or death. (This is often called "misdemeanor manslaughter".)

Murder is the act of killing another human being with "malice aforethought". Malice aforethought is defined to be the intent to kill or to inflict bodily injury, either express or implied. If a deadly weapon is used, intent to kill will necessarily be implied by a court of law.

This legal definitions taken from http://criminal-law.freeadvice.com "

Weazul

emotion less on this one..

crotchety old man died because he was stubborn

and a young man will have many years of his life removed because he made one mistake that turned into a huge (and rightfully so) deal

Sounds like a case of reap what you sew