Jeremy Christian jury starts deliberating after lawyers finish closing arguments

Jeremy Christian is an angry, violent and bigoted person. And when he boarded a rush-hour MAX train with a knife in his pocket and started spouting racist beliefs, he had a plan for anyone who challenged him: Stab them.

A prosecutor drew the portrait of Christian as he made closing arguments Wednesday to a packed downtown Portland courtroom on the 13th day of Christian’s trial, now in the hands of jurors.

The day before the attack, Christian had said: “'I’m about to stab some (expletives)," prosecutor Jeff Howes told jurors. "... A racist white supremacist, large former prisoner who got into many, many fights in prison says that statement undaunted, out of nowhere.”

Seventeen hours later, Howes said, Christian went on a “rampage.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, this case is about a person who at some point in late May 2017 decided he was going to go out with a bang,” Howes said.

The sole stabbing survivor and relatives of the two men Christian killed were among those filling the courtroom’s public gallery. Some had not attended earlier parts of the trial. Muted gasps and crying could be heard from their section of the courtroom as the prosecution once again showed jurors a video of the stabbings recorded by another commuter.

Christian watched the video, as he had many times during the trial. Christian’s mother, seated in the front row, turned away and closed her eyes.

“It’s hard to look at," Howes told jurors. “It’s hard to think about.”

Defense attorney Greg Scholl said the events of that afternoon on May 26, 2017, might have turned out much differently had Micah Fletcher, who tried to get Christian to leave the train, had not approached Christian so aggressively.

“We live in a world where confronting a loud and annoying and obnoxious person in the wrong way can lead to catastrophic results. And that is what happened in this case," Scholl said.

Christian hasn’t disputed that he stabbed the men but said he was acting in self-defense and shouldn’t be found guilty of any crimes.

“In this case there’s a lot of evidence,” Scholl said. “... But there’s not very much evidence as to why it happened. And that goes to the question ... what was this person’s intent? And intent is a crucial part of my argument here to you today.”

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Cheryl Albrecht sent the case to jurors to begin deliberations shortly after 5 p.m. But given the hour, jurors were sent home about 10 minutes later, with instructions to return Thursday morning. The jury is made up of five women and seven men. One juror is black, the rest appear to be white.

Christian is charged with the first-degree murders of Taliesin Namkai-Meche, 23, and Ricky Best, 53, and the first-degree attempted murder of Fletcher, then 21.

Christian stabbed all three about 4:30 p.m. on the Green Line train that had traveled from Portland State University and was heading to Clackamas Town Center. The bloodshed began as the train pulled into the Hollywood Transit Center in Northeast Portland.

Christian also is charged with the hate crime of second-degree intimidation for allegedly targeting two teenage girls -- one who is African American and the other who is from Somalia and was wearing a hijab. According to witnesses as well as video, Christian spoke of beheadings and yelled “(Expletive) Saudi Arabia!” and “Go home, we need American here!” His 6-minute diatribe included called for Muslims, Christians and Jews to die.

The stabbings, as well as the moments before and after, were caught on TriMet surveillance video and videos recorded by passengers using their cellphones.

A police detective said about five minutes before Christian started stabbing, he looked toward the two teens and made “a slicing motion across his neck.”

Howes, the prosecutor, told jurors that even 3-year-olds know what that means: “I’ll cut your head off. I’ll slit your throat.” He said of the teen girls: “They’re rightfully scared.”

The prosecution said Christian sat about 12 feet from the girls.

"A 250-pound man yelling this stuff at two 16-years-old, making threatening gestures, holding up religious books,” Howes said, referring to the Book of Mormon that Christian was carrying during the train ride.

The teens said when the train stopped, they ran into a nearby health club and hid because they thought Christian might follow and hurt or kill them. Walia Mohamed, who immigrated from Somalia when she was about 5, testified that she stopped wearing a hijab a few weeks later because she lives in fear she’ll be targeted again.

Christian also is charged with intimidating an African American woman about 11:30 p.m. the previous night. That woman, Demetria Hester, testified that Christian shouted racist words and said he was going to kill her while she rode a Yellow Line train on May 25, 2017. Hester said she maced him in the face and he threw a half-full drink container at her face.

“She was subjected to a racist barrage," Howes said. "She was threatened with death and she was struck squarely in the eye with a 32-ounce Gatorade bottle.”

Defense attorneys said Christian was exercising his free speech, however unpopular it might have been received.

“People are not allowed to just shut a person down,” Scholl said. “In fact, we protect speech that we don’t like. ... A person, if they don’t like your speech, can just walk away, although it’s a little more difficult to do that on a MAX car. A person can ignore the speaker."

Christian’s attorneys have described the three men on the Green Line train as “attackers” and said Christian needed the knife to defend himself because he was outnumbered.

They faulted Namkai-Meche for walking up to Christian with his phone and declaring, “You’re about to become an internet sensation” and Fletcher for, as a defense expert testified, pouring “gasoline” on the confrontation by shouting and pushing Christian.

But Howes called it “a myth” that Namkai-Meche “stuck his phone” in Christian’s face. "That’s a mischaracterization at best. His arm might be extended a bit. ... No one could reasonably think that phone could be in Jeremy Christian’s face,” the prosecutor said.

The defense also claimed in opening statements more than three weeks ago that Best was “wrestling” with Christian before he was stabbed but his lawyers presented no evidence and called no witnesses who supported that theory.

The only interaction Best appears to have had with Christian can be seen in videos of Best raising his arms or trying to push Christian away as Christian plunged the knife into his neck and face three times.

Christian’s defense contended Wednesday that when Fletcher pushed Christian, Christian looked up and saw three faces -- those of Fletcher, Namkai-Meche and Best, all lined up in the aisle in front of him.

“This turns into two against one, or even three against one,” Scholl said.

Christian, Scholl said, is not “a cold hearted villain.”

“What happened on MAX Car (No.) 415 is horrific," he said. "And the deaths are beyond tragic. And it can’t be fixed.”

But Scholl said Christian went into fight-or-flight mode and he chose to fight for his own safety.

The prosecution presented a dramatically different picture, much of it captured on the videos.

Christian was the first to get physical, by grabbing Namkai-Meche’s cellphone and throwing it to the floor, then by shoving Fletcher and Namkai-Meche in the chest as Christian yelled “Do something, (expletive)!” over and over. Fletcher responded by grabbing or pushing Christian three times and telling him to get off the train.

Namkai-Meche and Best don’t appear in the videos to have laid a hand on Christian before he started stabbing.

“(Namkai-Meche) was stabbed in the neck while holding his phone in one hand, his leftover lunch in the other hand," Howes said.

Best can be seen on the videos standing directly behind Namkai-Meche, before Christian moves in on him. Although it’s not easily audible on the videos, Howes said Best can be heard saying, “Just sit down.”

“This is not (Christian) defending himself against Ricky Best," Howes said. "This is just flat out cold, ‘I’m going to kill this person now,’ and that’s what he did.”

Fletcher testified that he walked up to Christian after Christian threw Namkai-Meche’s phone to the floor. Fletcher thought Christian was about to beat up Namkai-Meche and Fletcher didn’t think Namkai-Meche looked as if he’d ever been in a fight. So Fletcher, who said he had been bullied and pummeled in middle school because of his autism, stepped in.

Howes said after Christian shoved Fletcher and then Namkai-Meche and repeatedly yelled “Do something, (expletive)!” in their faces, Fletcher used reasonable force in pushing Christian away as Fletcher told Christian to “Go on, git” off the train. Christian was trying to provoke a fight, especially when he yelled “Hit me again!” Fletcher gave him a push and then Christian began stabbing.

“You can’t claim self-defense if you’re the initial aggressor,” Howes said, adding that the degree of force Christian used in response to Fletcher was “unjustifiable” and “unreasonable.”

“(What) the defense wants to do, they want to blame the victims,” Howes said. “... Blame the victims? No. No. Reject it.”

In addition to claiming Christian was acting in self-defense, his lawyers also called on psychologists who said Christian has autism spectrum disorder, has mental deficits that alter his perception of social situations and went into “auto-pilot” and wasn’t aware of what he was doing at the time he started stabbing.

They said Christian’s world was imploding because one or both of his parents had told him he was going to be kicked out of the family home -- and that meant he was in jeopardy of losing his extensive comic book collection, which he stored there.

“He was in crisis,” Scholl said.

A psychiatrist called by the prosecution countered many of the findings by the defense psychologists, saying Christian doesn’t have autism and doesn’t have any major mental illness. That psychiatrist diagnosed Christian with antisocial personality disorder, which is characterized by violence, aggression, lack of compassion for others and criminal thinking.

The prosecution argued that although Christian’s inhibitions might have been loosened because of the wine he had been drinking from a plastic bladder on the train, he had the mental capacity to fully understand what he’d done.

In a recording taken from the back seat of a police car after Christian’s arrest, he ranted about race, repeatedly used a derogatory term to describe African Americans and said he was defending his right to free speech when he stabbed the men.

“Hope they all die,” Christian said. “I hope everybody I stabbed dies.”

But Christian’s defense argued his mind was in a state of chaos and he was saying a lot of things that didn’t make sense -- including about outer space and “Star Trek.”

“Did he say that he meant for someone to die? Yes,” Scholl said. “He also raved about Saturn. ... These horrifying words were not meant and they were taken from a dysregulated person.”

The prosecution noted that Christian was aware enough of his surroundings that he looked out the police car window, saw a bumper sticker and made a joke. At another point on the ride, Christian had the clarity of mind to recall that Fletcher was wearing a Deadpool superhero T-shirt, Howes said.

“This is a person who knows exactly what he did, why he did it and he’s proud of it,” the prosecutor said. “He wants to brag about it. He has no sorrow for the victims.”

Christian’s defense told jurors they have a big decision ahead of them.

“Maybe it’s in the top five decisions that you are going to make in your life," Scholl said. “Maybe it’s in the top three.”

-- Aimee Green

agreen@oregonian.com

o_aimee

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