OAKLAND — The attorney for a man accused of pointing a handgun toward two black men outside of a mosque in Oakland in July states that the case isn’t about race, or even gun control.
Defense attorney Rachel Marshall said in her closing arguments Monday that her client Christopher Seelig, 30, went to get his gun in self-defense after getting into an argument with two men over trash bins.
The incident began July 15, 2017 on the 5000 block of Foothill Boulevard, just before midnight. Seelig was outside going through a trash bin, looking for something he thought he might have thrown away, his attorney said. Two men, Akida Harrison and Cyril Muhammad were outside unloading some garbage to prepare for services the next morning at the Muhammad Mosque #26, located on the same block on Foothill Boulevard.
The two men “assumed the worst” and allegedly thought Seelig was contributing to the debris, and confronted him about it, Marshall said.
Seelig tried to get out of the confrontation by walking away, telling them he had a gun, and went back inside his apartment, his attorney said. She said they told him “Hey white boy, where are you going?” as he left.
But while inside for several minutes, she said he peered through his window and saw them outside.
He also saw that he had left the gate to his apartment open. So, he took his gun with him and went outside, she said. He pointed the gun at them for several seconds, telling them to go away, she said.
Marshall said her client admitted to using the “N word,” toward the two black men — a terrible thing to say, but argued it wasn’t a crime itself.
Marshall said the prosecution “will try to make him (Seelig) out to be a racist.”
She urged the jury at the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse to not make Seelig a scapegoat for the racial problems in this country.
But prosecutor Keydon Levy, putting up Seelig’s mugshot on a TV in the courtroom Monday with the word “Guilty” in red, argued differently about the defendant’s word choices.
“This ain’t a fairytale, where words can never hurt you,” he said.
In the prosecution’s version of the story, Seelig came back out and threatened the two men saying “What’s up now n*****?” when pointing the gun at them.
Levy said Seelig also threatened the two men when he was first outside, stating that he should go get his gun and “pop them,” or shoot them.
“He wants them to try something because he thinks he can get away with it,” Levy said in his closing arguments.
He said Seelig wants the jury to believe it was “two on one,” and in self-defense, but it isn’t what the evidence supported.
“There’s the truth, and then what the defendant wants you to believe,” Levy said.
He also addressed race, stating that the nation’s racial problems or gun problems, “won’t be solved here” in court.
Marshall also argued in her statements that the jury should question the validity of the two men, Muhammad and Harrison. She showed the jury Monday screenshots of several posts Muhammad made online on his Facebook page. One read “Satan has been hiding in the religion of white people.” In another, he allegedly compared white police officers to members of the KKK, she said.
Seelig, who has a prior felony conviction in Ohio for possession of a controlled substance, was not allowed to have a gun or ammunition in his possession. Marshall asked the jury to convict her client on his two charges related to the gun and ammunition possession, but find him innocent of his two charges of making criminal threats.
The jury of 12 people were set to begin deliberations Monday afternoon.