Growing Up Gangster

As Circuit Court Judge J.D. Williamson prepared to read the jury's verdict, 15-year-old Courtney Brown clenched her fist so tightly that one of her new French-manicured nails popped off in her palm. "Not guilty."

Her brother, Jawanza Brown, bolted from the defendant's seat, nearly knocking over the chair. The 17-year-old burst out of the room. As TV news cameras watched, he danced defiantly.

His father, Keith Brown, put a finger to his lips, warning his family and friends not to celebrate in front of the families of the slain kids.

Jawanza's friend DuJuan looked up, confused. "What happened?" Someone told him that Jawanza was free. "He beat it?" he asked.

Jawanza had been charged with killing two teenagers in 2005 near a basketball court in a housing project. Three people claimed that they saw him do it.

He beat the accusations in part because of the work of Brown, a minister and community activist. Brown did his own detective work and made one of the witnesses, Jaronn Harris, sound more like a suspect.

Both the defense and the prosecution called children to the stand as their main witnesses. The teens, from some of KC's roughest inner city neighborhoods, got their first glimpse of how the justice system works. But they had a lesson for everyone else about what it's like to grow up poor and black on the city's East Side.

In March 28, 2007, the first day of Jawanza's trial, in a courtroom on the eighth floor of the Jackson County Courthouse, 16-year-old Jaronn Harris described the double homicide he says he witnessed on the evening of August 17, 2005. He wore a striped shirt. He answered each question slowly, after much prodding from prosecutors Kevin Harrell and Teresa Moore.

Jaronn had been labeled a snitch for talking to the cops. Judge Williamson received word that Jaronn's life had been threatened. The judge banned camera phones in the gallery for fear that someone would sneak a picture of the witnesses.

Jaronn said he met up with his friend Jawanza that summer night because the pair planned to go talk to the girls at drill team practice inside the Clymer Center, a gymnasium at the heart of the T.B. Watkins public housing project near 12th Street and Woodland. But the Clymer Center was too full, and the security guard told Jaronn and Jawanza to leave. As they walked away, Jaronn said, he noticed a 9 mm handgun in Jawanza's pocket.

Jaronn, according to police, is the son of Jai Scott, who was convicted of cocaine trafficking in 1992 and has spent much of the past 15 years behind bars. Meanwhile, Jawanza's father is an ordained minister and a community outreach specialist for an alternative school called Genesis. Brown and his wife, Barbara, named their second son after Jawanza Kunjufu, author of a book called Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys.

Near the basketball court, with the Clymer Center still in sight, they ran into two boys whom they didn't know well. Chris "Hits" Jackson was 17, and his family had just moved from Kansas City, Kansas, into one of the three-story brick buildings with matching green banisters that make up T.B. Watkins. His friend, 18-year-old Antonio Hall, was visiting from the old neighborhood.

Jaronn said he noticed an intense look on Jawanza's face. "What did you say about my boy?" Jawanza asked, according to Jaronn.

Chris grabbed his denim shorts at the waist, tugging them higher on his hips. Jaronn testified that Jawanza then took the gun out of his pocket and shot Chris several times.

"What happened next?" Harrell, the prosecutor, asked him.

"He dropped his orange juice," Jaronn said. "He fell."

Jaronn said Jawanza turned to go but changed his mind. Jawanza wheeled back around, Jaronn claimed, and shot Antonio. As Antonio fell, the phone in his pocket started ringing.

Jaronn said he remembered running away but then turning back. Jawanza was gone, but Jaronn returned to look at the bodies.

Chris was motionless and looked dead, Jaronn recalled. But Antonio was still alive, lying on his belly, trying to crawl on his elbows. He looked Jaronn in the eyes, and Jaronn watched him die.

"I never seen anything like that before," he testified.

During Jaronn's testimony, four boys glared at Jawanza from their seats in the back row of the gallery. As the details of Chris' and Antonio's deaths spilled forth, their eyes narrowed into slits. They all wore red — red embroidered hoodies, red sneakers. They muttered angry words under their breath. This was the first time that they had seen Jawanza, Jaronn, or anyone from the neighborhood where their friends died. Their hatred radiated from their red clothes like invisible halos.

Moore, the assistant prosecutor, slipped silently through the low swinging door into the gallery and whispered something to one of the boys. They all looked up at her testily, then filed out of the courtroom, slowly, with swagger.

A.J. is the little brother of Chris, one of the slain boys. The three others were Chris' friends. Outside, they sat sullenly on the stone steps of the courthouse. Their seat overlooked 12th Street and City Hall's fountain-lined courtyard. It was almost lunchtime on a warm spring day, and men and women in business suits walked by purposefully.