A Call for Justice

[UPDATE] Disturbing updates on a followup post found here.

I'm going to tell you about something horrible. Something horrendous. Something so terrible that you may not want to do much more than glance over the details and go to the bare facts. Why am I going to tell you about this? Because it needs to be told, and Justice needs to be done.

This is the story the Tennessean isn't covering. This is the story the National Media is paying no attention to. This is the story that has not gotten the coverage that is warranted considering the heinous nature of the crimes committed, the lives lost in such a brutal way. It's heartbreaking, it's tragic, and in my mind, there is a very, very large travesty of justice being committed as the story unfolds.

Going outside the blog world, my hat tip for this one goes to the Steve Gill Show, for that is where I first heard about this story today, nearly six months later, during his commentary on how that this story isn't getting any media coverage.

I'll begin with what media coverage there has been, then make commentary.

UT student's body found

January 9, 2007

KNOXVILLE (WATE) -- Police say the body of a UT student was found Tuesday in a Knoxville home is just down the street from where her boyfriend was found dead on Sunday.

The body of Channon Christian, 21, was found in a rental house on the 2300 block of Chipman Street in East Knoxville. It was taken to the UT Forensic Center where the positive identification was made.

The body of Christian's boyfriend, Christopher Newsom, 23, was found Sunday afternoon along the railroad tracks near 9th Ave.

The couple disappeared Saturday night while they were on a date.

Police have not released the cause of their deaths, but they say Newsom was murdered...

Search warrants reveal disturbing new details in Knoxville double murder investigation

January 16, 2007

By CATHARYN CAMPBELL
6 News Reporter

KNOXVILLE (WATE) -- Search warrants in the double murder investigation of a young Knoxville couple reveal disturbing new details about what happened.

According to the affidavits for those search warrants, investigators found the body of Channon Christian, 21, stuffed in a trash can in the kitchen of Lemaricus Davidson's home at 2316 Chipman Street.

Investigators obtained the warrants after they found the body of her boyfriend, Christopher Newsom, 23, near the railroad tracks behind 1701 Whittle Springs on January 7.

Newsom had been shot at least three times. He was bound with rope or bootlaces and wrapped in a sheet. His shoes and socks were missing, along with his ID and iPOD. His body had been burned and physically assaulted.

(...)


When officers went to Davidson's house on Chipman Street, they say the front door was ajar. As they looked for Davidson, they found Christian's body in the trash can.

In that house, investigators also seized evidence that includes: a .9mm magazine, two .22 rounds, a rifle, three black trash bags with more possible evidence, cell phones, iPODs, loose .38 ammunition, a .22 shell casing, a plastic bag with hair and socks and a gun cleaning kit.

Another affidavit says that two more of the suspects who are charged, Letalvis Cobbins and George Thomas, voluntarily told investigators they were at Davidson's house when he and a fourth suspect, Eric Boyd, came in with the couple bound and blindfolded.

Cobbins and Thomas also told investigators that Eric Boyd took Newsom from the house at gunpoint and later returned without him.

And Cobbins and Thomas said they were at the house when Boyd sexually assaulted Christian while she was still alive.

Officers have obtained DNA samples and fingernail scrapings from Boyd as part of their investigation.

All four suspects are facing a variety of felony charges. But so far, none of the men has been charged with murder.

Four suspects charged with murder in Knoxville double slaying

February 1, 2007

KNOXVILLE (WATE) -- Four suspects, including a woman arrested in Kentucky Wednesday night, are now facing murder, rape and kidnapping charges in the double slaying of a young Knoxville couple.

But the location of the carjacking that began the series of charges in the investigation and why it happened is still being kept quiet.

The suspects were indicted Thursday in Knox County, separate from the federal charges some of the men already face relating to the carjacking. The rape charges involve both murder victims, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom.

Lemaricus Davidson faces 46 counts including felony murder, premeditated murder, aggravated robbery, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated rape and theft.

Letalvis Cobbins faces 46 counts including 16 counts of felony murder, two counts of premeditated murder, two counts of especially aggravated robbery, four counts of especially aggravated kidnapping, 20 counts of aggravated rape and two counts of theft.

George Thomas faces 46 counts including 16 counts of felony murder, two counts of premeditated murder, two counts of especially aggravated robbery, four counts of especially aggravated kidnapping, 20 counts of aggravated rape and two counts of theft.

Vanessa Lynn Coleman, 18, faces 40 counts including 12 counts of felony murder, one count of premeditated murder, one count of especially aggravated robbery, four counts of especially aggravated kidnapping, 20 counts of aggravated rape and two counts of theft...

What they don't tell on the news reports listed above, from what I've found so far, are the horrible details of what happened to this young couple. Both of them were raped, sodomized, he was castrated, and her breasts where cut off, before they were killed. Words can not express my feelings about this. There are no words. The full count indictments against these animals, and I say animals because anyone who can do what was done here can't be classified as human, can be found here. And yes, I know that we prescribe to innocent until found guilty. That being said, WHOEVER DID THIS to this young couple should be put down like rabid animals, in my opinion.

Insult to injury: the DA in this case is NOT, I repeat, NOT, seeking the death penalty, according to the Gill Show. I'm sure that he'd love to explain to anyone who wishes to call him as to why?

Knox County District Attorney
Address:
Randy Nichols
400 W Main St Rm 168
Knoxville, TN
37902
Phone: (865) 215-2515

Why is this not being shown nationally? Why does the Duke Lacrosse team make the headlines over false allegations and this horrible, horrible situation that really did happen go unnoticed?

A few thoughts on this can be found here:

The Truth About Who Suffers
And about who inflicts the suffering.

By Jack Dunphy

It may seem like ancient history now, but it was only a year ago that we were first subjected to the media circus that was the so-called and now-dropped Duke Rape Case. For months thereafter, you couldn't pick up a newspaper or turn on the television or radio without learning some new tidbit about the accused lacrosse players, even as their accuser remained shrouded in mystery. Today we know there was no rape and now not even a case at all, but even in those early days it was apparent enough that there were glaring problems with the accuser’s story (or, as it happened, stories). But not even those problems prevented the case from consuming the attention of the sages in our national media, whose foot soldiers decamped from New York and Los Angeles and such places to descend on Durham, North Carolina, as quickly as they could find it on the map.

The case was simply irresistible to our sophisticated betters in Manhattan and the tonier zip codes of southern California. The “victim” was black and a single mother, each in itself a shield against criticism, but taken together an impregnable defense against any judgment of her own behavior and motives. Furthermore, she claimed to have been attacked by a group of southern white elites, thus justifying the low opinion of such elites held by those who live within sight of the Pacific Ocean or the Hudson River. (Never mind that none of the accused were actually from the south.) Only when the evidence of the defendants’ innocence and of the prosecutor’s misconduct accumulated to an undeniable critical mass did the media slink off to await the next Big Story.

Compare the attention given the Duke case with that accorded a far more heinous crime, one whose victims have thus far failed to arouse the sympathies or even the notice of those who found so much enjoyment in their condemnation of the lacrosse players. Chances are, unless you live in Tennessee, you will not recognize the names Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. Christian, 21, and Newsome, 23, both of Knoxville, were driving through that city together on the night of January 6 when they were kidnapped and murdered. Newsome’s burned body was found along some railroad tracks on January 7. Christian remained missing for two more days until her body, stuffed in a trash can, was found in a home not far from where Newsome’s was found. Police and prosecutors allege both victims were raped before being killed. Yes, both. Three men and a woman have been charged with the crimes in a 46-count grand jury indictment handed down in Knoxville on January 31...

Steve Gill has this to say on his Daily Notes page:

I guarantee that if the victims were a black college couple, and the murderers were a bunch of white guys you would have seen this story on television so much your eyes would be bleeding. As it is, the media has ignored it. Where is Jesse Jackson? Al Sharpton? Don't they think racially motivated crimes deserve attention? Or is only white on black crime worthy of our contempt and outrage?

This is why I'm against hate crimes legislation. We don't need the thought police telling us "this crime was a HATE crime and they deserve more punishment for it." Bull. It's a crime. How much more dead would Phillip Workman be today if he had been charged with a hate crime when he was found guilty of killing a Memphis police officer instead of just being charged for the crime itself? He'd still be dead after his execution this week.

I don't know the Christian or Newsom families; they live at the other end of the state from me. My heart goes out to them, though, as a parent, as a human, as a man. I can't imagine the grief and the pain they must be suffering.

Again I want to pose the questions. Why is this not being tried as a capital crime? It makes no sense to me that it would be treated as anything but. Why the lack of media attention for this case? Does this story have less merit, less importance, than finding out who the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby is? Is it more important that we know that Paris Hilton is going to have to pay the price for driving on a suspended license?

I'm going to ask my fellow Tennesseans especially to feel free to cross post this one, in it's entirety, in part, trackback to it, link to it, whatever. Get the word out. Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom deserve it, and so do their families. They deserve justice. And they deserve, and need, our prayers and support. Any of you with more information on this story, feel free to pass it along to us.

This needs to be told, and it needs to be told now.

Once and Always, an American Fighting Man

[UPDATE] Disturbing updates on a followup post found here.

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