For years, no one except their families and a few close friends seemed to notice — or perhaps care — about the circumstances of the 2005 death of Brian Epp and the murder conviction of the man who killed him, John McNeil.
Almost seven years later, however, the Epp-McNeil story is being played out by news organizations worldwide and on the Internet. It’s an example of how such attention can help create a movement, like the one centered on Georgia’s execution of Troy Davis a year ago and the stand-your-ground debate after the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida earlier this year.
Like those cases, race is an element fueling at least some of the interest. Epp was white. McNeil is black.
The shooting in an upscale Kennesaw subdivision received scant media coverage once police decided McNeil was justified in shooting Epp. They concluded McNeil felt he was defending himself and his teenage son from the 43-year-old builder, and had not committed a crime.
“There was nothing that newsworthy about it,” said District Attorney Pat Head.
Media outlets didn’t notice when McNeil was indicted 294 days later, convicted of murder a few months later and sentenced to life in prison.
“The police never make the final decision about who to prosecute or what charges to prosecute,” Head said. “That final decision always rests with the prosecutor. The facts of this case is that it was a murder case and we presented it to a grand jury. And we presented it to 12 jurors and they all believed it was murder. And believed beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The national, North Carolina and Georgia NAACP offices have launched a campaign decrying McNeil’s conviction as an injustice based on race. They say Georgia’s strong “defense of castle” doctrine, also referred to as the “stand your ground law,” should have protected him, and ask why such protection seemingly didn’t apply to a black man who shot and killed a white man he feared may harm or kill him or his family.
“This is a case we really care about,” said Niaz Kasravi, director of the national NAACP’s criminal justice program. “It’s something that fell off the radar for many people, and we’ve been able to bring it to the attention of people in a way it hasn’t been done.”
Kasravi said, “We are an advocacy organization that advocates for major civil and human rights, and not a legal defense fund, so taking on cases is not what we do. However, certain cases that are egregious represent a larger problem and are brought before the board and the board votes to uplift them get a bit more attention and support.”
Those cases are chosen when requests from local chapters go to the regional boards and then to the national board.
“We do get a lot of requests, [but] it is often the local and state chapters who are best equipped for supporting individual cases, which is where we refer folks,” Kasravi said.
News conferences and rallies have been held in Marietta, Atlanta and Wilson, N.C., McNeil’s hometown. An online petition asks Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens not to challenge a judge’s decision that could free McNeil; Olens has until Oct. 26 to appeal.
And McNeil’s story has been told in media including the Washington Post, USA Today, the Daily Mail in London, ABC News, the Huffington Post and Salon.com.
But Head, Cobb County’s prosecutor since 1998, said a lot of information coming out in news releases and at rallies is inaccurate or exaggeration. He said a jury convicted McNeil based on facts and sworn testimony.
“People are just flat out lying,” Head said. “They ought to be running around naked because their pants are all burned up.”
For example, Head said, there were no 2006 election-year pressures to prosecute McNeil; Head’s next election was in 2008.
And race was not a factor in the decision to prosecute, Head said.”I think anybody who knows me knows that’s [claims of racism] an absolute lie.”
Epp had sold the McNeils a $439,000 he built next door to one Epp was building for his mother. There had been some friction between Epp and McNeil. The McNeils closed on the sale even though construction was not complete, and Epp still had a list of items to finish.
In December 2005, 16-year-old La’Ron McNeil called his father to report a strange man in the backyard, near a leaking pipe. La’Ron said Epp waved a knife and threatened him when the teenager told Epp his father said he had to leave the property.
John McNeil, angry, called police as he drove home.
According to witnesses, when he arrived John McNeil retrieved a gun from the glove box in his Mercedes Benz, loaded it and told Epp to back off. McNeil fired a warning shot into the ground yet Epp kept coming. A second shot was into Epp’s forehead, almost between his eyes.
“We are saddened that a life was lost but I can honestly say John would not have hurt anyone or shot anyone unless his or his child’s life was in danger,” his wife, Anita McNeil, said.
A Cobb County jury of 10 whites and two blacks convicted McNeil in December 2006, and the Georgia Supreme Court upheld that conviction.
But on Sept. 26, a judge in Baldwin County, where McNeil was imprisoned at one time, ruled on an appeal that his lawyer made mistakes and jurors weren’t told of some things they should have been, including what rights McNeil had to defend a “third party,” his son, as well as himself, and Epp’s previous drug conviction.
That ruling gave McNeil’s movement new energy and publicity.
For Epp’s widow, the attention renews pain. Kari Epp is trying to keep news accounts of the case from her two children. They were young when their father was killed — 5 and 2 — but they are now aware of the events even though the family has left the Atlanta area, moving to Sarasota, Fla., soon after the shooting.
“They murdered my husband,” said Kari Epp. “The NAACP got behind McNeil … and they are skewing things.”
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