By Nicholas Stix
On August 15, 2007, St. Louis gang-banger Antonio Andrews, 15, was looking to kill a cop, and rookie St. Louis City Officer Norvell Brown pulled up alongside Andrews and a friend. The two gangsters ran, and Officer Brown gave chase. Andrews engaged Brown in a gunfight, but Brown’s luck ran out. First, his gun jammed, and second, Andrews managed to shoot him in the shoulder through an opening in his vest.
But Andrews denied his guilt in court, and played the victim. Only one time in my life can I recall a black murderer admitting he was guilty as charged, when there was money on the table. That was a killer who’d been sentenced to die, but didn’t think he ought to, who was profiled on 60 Minutes, back in the late 1980s.
I know of two black killers, offhand, who confessed, once there was no jeopardy to them. One is Lemrick Nelson Jr., the racist anti-Semite who murdered Yankel Rosenbaum during the 1991 Crown Heights Pogrom. Nelson claimed he was innocent until after a racist black and Hispanic jury acquitted him, and then went out to party with him, with the female jurors kissing and hugging him. Then he confessed to the murder, while lying, in denying that the murder was motivated by anti-Semitism. (Nelson decided to murder Rosenbaum, when he heard a racist black shout, “Kill the Jew!”)
The other is Detroit hit-man serial killer Vincent Smothers—a Smothers brother not to be confused with the Smothers Brothers—who has confessed to four murders, in order to get young Davontae Sanford off.
However, convicts with nothing to lose have been known to confess to crimes, in order to get other criminals off.
Rapist-murderer Matias Reyes did just that, in claiming, incredibly, to have raped and beaten the Central Park Jogger, Trisha Meili almost to death all by himself in 1989, in order to try and get five other attackers off for their crimes.
Otherwise, they’re all "innocent": O.J. Simpson, Anne Pressly’s killer, Curtis Lavelle Vance, serial Nation of Islam killer, John Allen Muhammad, et al.
At the sentencing hearing, a defiant Andrews told St. Louis Circuit Judge Dennis Schaumann that he didn’t kill the officer.[See Countenance Blog on the murder of Officer Norvell Brown.]
“I hope ya’ll are happy,” Andrews said in court. “You are taking my life, and I didn’t do this. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
A St. Louis jury took five hours to find him guilty after they heard from several eye witnesses who had changed their stories since they first talked to investigators.
Another teen who was with Andrews that evening testified that they were walking to a Chinese restaurant with a gun when Brown pulled along side them. The teens ran and Brown gave chase, according to testimony.
The prosecutor said Andrews told his friend before opening fire that he was tired of running from the police.
Countenance Blog thinks it was “youthful arrogance” that got Officer Brown killed. He was one of those guys who became a cop, in order to “make a difference” and help save black kids. If he had survived a couple of years longer, he would have lost his youthful delusions.
Maybe so. But maybe his mistake was in “thinking white.”
When I was a kid in Long Beach, New York, I knew maybe half of the 70 or so policemen in the Long Beach Police Department, and probably more than half of them knew me. I was a local character, but I was also a juvenile delinquent. And yet my relations with all but two mooks on the LBPD were positive. In fact, I can’t think of any group in Long Beach that treated me as well as the Long Beach Police Department did. (My gym teachers came in second, even though I was lousy at sports.) Some of these guys, including one black officer, showed me genuine warmth. And they were all experienced cops.
Granted, Long Beach was, and is, a small town of about 30,000 souls. But I think it was more that these guys knew me. They knew that although I got into trouble, it was never vicious trouble, and they knew that at heart, I wasn’t a bad guy.
I’m sure they would not have had that attitude towards a black budding psychopath. That’s because in such cases, they would have thought “black.”
Racist blacks love to condemn all whites who are realistic about black perfidy, including me, as lacking an understanding of blacks, and of “thinking white,” but the reality is the opposite. It is the mindless white liberals who “think white,” when they talk about “rehabilitating” black psychopaths. (I’m talking here about the few whites who really believe what they say; most who talk that way are just fans of black murderers, and looking to spring them, so they can wreak more mayhem.)
The problem with a guy like Officer Brown is that he apparently thought he could reform black psychopaths. No one can reform a psychopath of any color.
A teen-ager convicted of shooting to death St. Louis Officer Norvelle Brown after a brief foot chase in 2007 was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
October 10, 2009
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Antonio Andrews, 17, was convicted in August of first-degree murder in shooting in the 1600 block of Semple Avenue on Aug. 15 that year. Andrews, who was 15 at the time of the murder, was certified to stand trial as an adult.
At the sentencing hearing, a defiant Andrews told St. Louis Circuit Judge Dennis Schaumann that he didn’t kill the officer.
“I hope ya’ll are happy,” Andrews said in court. “You are taking my life, and I didn’t do this. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
A St. Louis jury took five hours to find him guilty after they heard from several eye witnesses who had changed their stories since they first talked to investigators.
Another teen who was with Andrews that evening testified that they were walking to a Chinese restaurant with a gun when Brown pulled along side them. The teens ran and Brown gave chase, according to testimony.
The prosecutor said Andrews told his friend before opening fire that he was tired of running from the police.
Brown, 22, on the force one year, had fired a single shot from his pistol before it jammed, according to testimony. Fellow officers found the gun near him. Brown had been hit once in the shoulder, through an opening in his bullet-resistant vest.
Brown’s family was in the courtroom Friday but chose not to address the judge.
St. Louis Police Chief Dan Isom, who got to know Brown through Police Athletic League’s track team, said he was pleased with the sentence, but this was a sad day for everyone involved.
He added: “I hope this sends a message to young people to think before you act—your decisions can have life-altering consequences that you can’t take back.”
[Previously, at WEJB/NSU:
“We are No Longer a Protected Class. We are a Targeted Class”: The War on Police Expands: Why Do So Many Bad Guys Feel Emboldened to Assault and Murder Cops?”]
The young black male was railroaded by the Criminal Justice System. All of the so-called witnesses had falsified their stories on several occasions and to top it off, all of the witnesses were felons. Why not put all the blame on someone that has never been arrested. As for the gang banger part, he was never that. All the evidence that was presented was totally ignored. The only reason he was accused of killing Officer Brown because they had to find someone to blame for his murder. That's so sad when you take an innocent youths life just to close a case. People need to be judged fairly regardless of their skin color, age or the amount of money you may have. All I can say Judgement Day will determine how well you treated others while on earth.
ReplyDeleteAt first, I thought you were being sarcastic. Now, I see otherwise. But you provided no support for your contentions. Why should I believe you?
ReplyDeleteI am the brother of Antonio Andrews, my name is Alphonzo. My brother was used as a scapegoat in this case, in the state of Missouri there is a thing called make it up as you go judicial system. Now im going to be brief with what I have to say because at this point the idiots downtown have figured they got away with one for the "dummies in blue". The one thing that's needs to be pointed out is that the cop was a dirty cop. When the situation occured it was said that he was chasing my brother but how can u shoot someone in the back by their right shoulder blade when you have to turn around to shoot them and my brother is right handed. That would mean my brother is a magician. Not only did he not shoot him but there was no bullet and there wasn't any dna or prints on the gun from my brother. In open court when that was brought up, the idiotic prosecutor suggested to jury to defy the evidence proving my brother didn't touch or fire a weapon because and I quote "this is not an episode of CSI", and the even bigger idiot judge allowed it. I thought DNA, GSR, FINGERPRINTS were things that werw suppose to convict and exonerate individuals but MISSOURI stricks again they seemed to change the standars for a cop murder. If it weren't a cop we wouldn't be discussing a 15 year old kid being railroaded. We have cops or "hossas" as I call em kill people by drunk driving or shooting and they get of w/o a so much as a scratch. Petty and pitiful this city/state has the worst justice system ....#theworstever
ReplyDeleteI can be contacted at alphonzoandrews@gmail.com for more info or further discussions
Dear Mr. Andrews,
ReplyDeleteI had never heard the term “make-it-up-as-you-go” criminal justice, but it’s a good one. We have something like that in New York City, too, though I’m not in a position to say which system is worse. I would imagine that under today’s criminal justice conditions, people from a lot of cities and states could make a compelling argument that their jurisdiction is the most corrupt. Kind of like arguments about which state is the most politically corrupt: New Jersey, Louisiana, Illinois…?
I do not want innocent men railroaded for crimes they didn’t commit. I have a particular animus towards witnesses who change their testimony. I’ve previously seen this happen, where witnesses were willing to perjure themselves, in order to get killers off, and to protect themselves from snitch justice. If you are right, your brother’s case would be the first I’ve encountered (but surely not the last), where someone perjured himself by changing his story, in order to get an innocent man convicted.
If you can send me any links to printed material about the court case documenting the statements (e.g., by the prosecutor) and forensic/ballistics and corruption issues (re Norvelle Brown in particular, and the SLPD in general) you raised, I would appreciate it, and would copy and paste it at this blog.
With that said, however, it occurs to me that Officer Norvelle Brown is still dead, and did not die of a heart attack.
You claim that Officer Brown was “dirty.” What proof do you have of that? And let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that he was dirty. Would that somehow change the fact that he was murdered, or would it somehow make this a case, in your mind, of justifiable homicide? You want me to be extremely careful about facts, morality, and law, where your brother is concerned, but seem a bit less rigorous, where policemen are concerned.
I look forward to reading your response.
Sincerely,
Nicholas Stix
Norvelle may you rest in peace God bless you brother
ReplyDeleteMan that was awesome Stix. Did he ever respond?
ReplyDeleteBre,
ReplyDeleteNope.
I went to school with Antonio when we were kids. I wish things turned out different for him. He was a sweet kid that was from the hood. His environment made it easier for people to judge his character without knowing him. We went to a good school district in the county and he had good opportunities in front of him. He was well loved and had a lot of friends. It’s not my place to say if he is guilty or not. I hate that there was loss of life. Just sad that the person I knew then would have never done something like this. I remember when we heard about it at school, everyone was in shock. Word on the street was he didn’t do it and was covering for someone. If true I guess he didn’t know the true loss of life that would come with that sentence once convicted. Sorry for the officer’s loss of life and Antonio’s. I’m not the one to judge. Just speaking from a perspective of a person that once knew him. Sad for both families overall.
ReplyDelete