BC to Big J: Not in our house

I spent some time in the courtroom today observing a portion of the closing arguments in the trial of the killer of Kieaunta Ward. I looked at the clean-cut Calhoun County folks on my right, and I looked at the Detroit guy known as "Jack" or "Big J" and I knew that if the prosecution had put the facts together, the jury wouldn't hesitate to convict. After just 40 minutes of deliberation, the jury slam-dunked a guilty verdict into the prosecutors' hands.
Count this one not only as a victory for justice and for a criminal justice system that works, but also for the persistence of Kay Pierce, Kieaunta's mother, who never let up on the Battle Creek Police Department to keep investigating and the Calhoun County Prosecutor's office to keep working the case to its conclusion.
And credit Kevin Kendall, who threw the first punch in the fight outside Green's Tavern that night and then, three years later, remembered the guy he'd hit -- who didn't remember him -- and found a way to make him say, with another witness present, that he "took care of business" in the 2002 shooting of Ward.
I visited Ward's grave this evening -- Kay Pierce was one of the most down-to-earth, no-bull-talking sources in my violence package last year -- just for a little mental closure on that case. I was happy for his mom, glad to see justice done, proud of the police and prosecutors again, and glad the jury saw through the maze of statements from convicts to see that a murder had occurred, and that the chain of stories connected Michael Thompson to the 40-caliber gunshots that took Kay Pierce's beloved Kie-Kie in the early morning hours of July 22, 2002.