There he had a gun - a Glock 9 mm with an extended magazine and 22 rounds - on the floorboard and illegally on school property.Īs Batten waited outside the car, Kaveon Eley, one of the students who had a beef with Batten, approached.īatten said he tried to get quickly into the sedan and close the door, but Eley held it open and punched him once in the face. “We really about to do his a** tomorrow,” Dunham texted another student the night before the basketball game, with texts also indicating the group was watching Batten’s movements during the game.īatten said that to get away from any danger, he left the tied game early - with about two minutes left - and walked to his friend’s parked car. They were upset that Batten had posted a video along with an upside-down bunny.
17 YEAR OLD NOT GUILTY TRIAL
Text messages introduced at the trial showed that a group of students - including Dunham - was mad at Batten about an Instagram post he made that they interpreted as mocking of their gang, the “Playboy Bunnies.” “He’s trapped like a rat with nowhere to go and acted reasonably under the circumstances.”Īs for the prosecution’s argument that Batten “brought a gun to a fistfight,” Broccoletti said Batten only “brought a gun to a parking lot,” and “they brought the fight to where the weapon was.” Batten had no idea, he said, “how far they were going to go” to injure him.īatten, who was attending Warwick High School at the time, testified Tuesday that he “thought it was going to be a fun night” when he went with a friend to the Menchville-Woodside basketball game after work.īut during the first half, Batten said, he got an ominous text message from a friend that another group of students was watching his every move. “What did they want him to do, stand there and take an a** whooping?” Broccoletti asked. If they were going to beat him so severely, why would they do it in a packed parking lot with police and other people around.”īroccoletti, on the other hand, asserted that Dunham and his friends were attacking Batten from both sides of a parked car, severely limiting his options to get away.
“He retreats to where the gun is,” Button said. 14 basketball game and “brought a gun to a fistfight.” That means prosecutors can bring back the second-degree murder count if they choose.ĭuring closing arguments Tuesday, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Mary Button said Batten overreacted after the Dec. He instead asked the jury’s foreman only if they “considered all three options,” and the foreman said yes. In the end, Sugg didn’t ask jurors where the stalemate was. “We are not to know what goes on back there.” “They are not allowed to explain things to us,” she said of jurors. She said the judge should not inquire about their decision beyond the verdict forms. Broccoletti asked the judge to poll the jurors “to resolve this matter once and for all.”īut Senior Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Jennifer Titter disagreed, asserting that polling the jurors would be improper under the court’s rules and the case law. If that was indeed the jurors’ point of impasse, Broccoletti contended, Sugg needed to toss the second-degree murder charge and bar the prosecution from bringing it back later. That created about 45 minutes of legal wrangling following the verdict. Those charges will move forward to sentencing in January.īut jurors found Batten, who turns 19 on Thursday, not guilty of another gun charge - using a firearm in the commission of second-degree murder.īroccoletti contended the acquittal on that count indicates jurors agreed not to convict Batten of second-degree murder - and were split only between finding him guilty of manslaughter and finding him not guilty at all. While the 12-member jury failed to reach a verdict on the homicide charge, jurors found Batten guilty on three other charges - possessing a firearm on school property, shooting a firearm on school property, and carrying in public a loaded semi-automatic pistol with a magazine holding more than 20 rounds. “I wanted them to back off of me and get away and to leave me alone,” Batten testified Tuesday. Dunham, a standout football player at Woodside High School, was shot to death near a parked car as fans cleared out after the packed game between Menchville and Woodside.īatten’s attorney, James Broccoletti, made a self-defense case, with Batten testifying he shot Dunham as he was being attacked and while Dunham and another student were trying to grab his gun.
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