The Chronicle runs an AP dispatch for today’s death row killer guy, apparently deciding that neither Allan Turner nor any other staff reporter could very easily rehabilitate the image of one Ronald Ray Howard or explain the outside forces driving his crime; not that the AP reporter didn’t try a little bit:
Defense lawyers argued at his trial that Howard’s constant exposure to gangsta rap music and its anti-police messages influenced him to pull the trigger.
“He grew up in the ghetto and disliked police and these were his heroes, these rappers … telling him if you’re pulled over, just blast away,” his trial attorney, Allen Tanner, recalled last week. “It affected him. That was a totally valid serious defense.”
Howard told a grand jury he was listening to “Soulja’s Story” by Tupac Shakur before he shot Davidson. The song makes references to a young black male being pulled over by police, remembering Rodney King, then opening fire on an officer.
“I’m not a psychologist,” Howard said Wednesday. “So I don’t know. I never said: Yes it did or no it didn’t. I don’t know. But my lawyers thought it could have caused it. And they were trying to justify, put reason, for what I did.”
What he did was gun down a state trooper (and father of two) in cold blood during a traffic stop. The jury convicted him after only 40 minutes of deliberation.
Mr. Howard will be departing this world later in the evening.
