The conviction and death sentence of the former Atwater Village Street gang leader, who police committed at least 12 murders and was once on the crying list, was believed to have been overturned by the California Supreme Court on Thursday.
Timothy McGee was found guilty of three murders and four attempted murders in 2007 and is currently listed as a “condemned” prisoner at the Kern Valley State Prison.
The Supreme Court ruled that the judge had made the mistake of removing Ju Judge No. 5. The other ju judges took the position that all prosecutor witnesses were instructed and demonstrated “anti-politics or prosecutor’s prejudice” during deliberations.
“The records do not support the court’s ruling that the discharged ju apprentice was unable to fulfill its duties as a ju apprentice,” the judicial statement wrote in its opinion. “The court’s decision was therefore an abuse of discretion.”
The decision means that McGee will be on a new trial decades after the raucous murders that took place between 1997 and 2001. Police say McGee used violence to control the drug trade around Los Ferris Boulevard, between Rubber and San Fernando Boulevard.
McGee is known for running the Toonerville Street Gang in a military structure and ordered soldiers to participate in organized fitness and targeting practices at the range of fire.
Detectives believed he was responsible for many murders, including the September 2000 shooting of a 17-year-old boy sketching along the LA River, and the murder of a homeless man whom McGee allegedly believed to have witnessed the teenage murder a few minutes later.
McGee was charged with murdering a 16-year-old boy in June 2000. Because the teen shared the nickname McGee.
The following summer, McGee was linked to the murder of a 21-year-old man from Pomona and the attempted murder of a pregnant girlfriend who suffered a brain injury. The baby survived.
LAPD detectives said weeks later, McGee had killed three people at his Atwater Village home. Police said the woman’s mother and another man were killed because they were witnesses.
“Basically, he’s a monster,” said former LAPD Det. Andy Teague told the LA Times in 2001.
In 2012, while on death row in San Quentin State Prison, McGee was charged with cutting two corrections officers with a shank while returning from the shower to his cell.
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