Miami Herald - Friday, December 9, 1994
Gina Holland, Associated Press

This defense strategy has drawn protests from gay activists, who see it as an attempt to play upon jurors' fears and bigotry.

"AIDS is a panic word, and they've used it very effectively in this case," said April Richards, president of G.L. Friendly, a south Mississippi homosexual alliance. "We could have happy hunting on gays and lesbians in the state, because they can get away with it."

Over the objections of prosecutors and national gay groups, Circuit Judge Billy Joe Landrum ordered HIV tests on the two victims. Landrum has not decided whether to release the test results or allow them to be used in the trial, scheduled to begin Jan. 30.

Defense attorney J. Ronald Parrish said that if either victim were HIV-positive, "it would be no different than if they had a loaded weapon and pointed it at an individual."

But District Attorney Jeannene Pacific called the AIDS issue "totally irrelevant. It has no other purpose than to inflame jurors."

Attorney General Janet Reno has been asked twice to intervene, most recently after the judge ordered the AIDS tests. A Justice Department spokesman said Reno has not decided whether she has jurisdiction.

Marvin McClendon, a high school sophomore, is charged with killing Robert Walters, 34, and Joseph Shoemake, 24. Both were shot in the head at close range, and their bodies were dumped next to abandoned railroad tracks near a swamp.

Police say Shoemake, a factory worker, and Walters, who was in the commercial art business, left a party late Oct. 7 and went cruising for sex. They found McClendon near his house in Laurel, a town of about 19,000.

Prosecutors say McClendon was a troubled youth looking for money and that he robbed the victims of about $100 before shooting them.

Attorney Parrish tells a different story: that McClendon agreed to help the victims buy marijuana, but they instead drove him to the tracks and tried to force him to have oral sex.

"One of the men let the seat down and said, 'Now you've had it, nigger.' The other one grabbed his leg, and that's when the shooting started," Parrish said.

Parrish has not said why McClendon feared that the two men had AIDS.

Tyler Fletcher, chairman of the criminal justice department at the University of Southern Mississippi, said using AIDS in the defense argument might be enough to sway a jury.

"If the jury looks at a young man trying to protect himself from the onslaught of a deadly disease, who knows what they might think?" he said. "The thing that makes it difficult to deal with is the social implication. (Parrish's) job is to take advantage of any fears."

Parrish said gay groups' clamoring for justice landed his client in "one of the filthiest jails in Mississippi."

"As far as I'm concerned, the national Gay and Lesbian Task Force is no better than the Ku Klux Klan. They act just like a lynch mob," Parrish said.

"I'm not going to sit around and let a bunch of gays and lesbians lynch a 16-year-old black boy. They can go pick on somebody else's carcass."

Beth Barrett, spokeswoman for the Washington-based National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, one of the groups calling for Justice Department intervention, said Parrish is using "despicable" tactics.

"He is exploiting the evils of racism and the evils of homophobia in an attempt to cloud justice in support of his client," Barrett said Thursday, rsday. "The task force only wants justice."
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