(CNN) -- For Elke Kennedy, the significance of Wednesday's hate crimes legislation can be traced to a single punch outside a bar on a drunken night two years ago.
"My son was murdered as he was leaving a bar in Greenville, South Carolina," the 48-year-old woman told CNN about her son, Sean, who was 20 when he came face-to-face with what she calls a hate crime. "He walked outside the bar and there was three people sitting in a car outside and they called him over to ask him for a cigarette."
How long did the assailant spend in jail? You'll love this:
He bargained it down to involuntary manslaughter and served 199 days in the county lockup followed by 12 months in prison, Kennedy said. Moller was released on probation last July, she said.
Okay, so we need so-called "Hate Crimes" legislation because our Criminal "Justice" system is hideously broken? Are you kidding me? Involuntary manslaughter and he served a year and a half in jail? We don't need Hate Crime legislation. We need to start making people pay for abusing their freedoms. First off, I dispute the involuntary part of the manslaughter charge - this isn't a car crash where the death was wholly unintentional. He punched that kid hard enough to cause significant brain damage - that's not an accident.
The whole concept of "Hate Crime" legislation is just so Orwellian that I had to use the line from Animal Farm for the title of this post. All animals are equal, some are more equal than others. Because the object of ire was a "protected" group, the perpetrator of violence should receive a stiffer penalty, that's the general idea behind Hate Crimes - essentially creating a new, more important class of people. Everyday shmoes who take a beating for being in the wrong place at the wrong time are SOL; special groups get special treatment.
Could there possibly be anything more unAmerican than setting up a special victim class that gets special protection under the law?
That is all.
12 comments:
On my first ship, my supervisor called me 'Boston Irish white trash' and refused to give me a respirator while spray painting in a confined space. Does this new rule cover me for being exposed to a carcinogen because of my ethnicity? No it does not. Now, if I was gay, and was refused some piece of personal protective equipment, I'd own the company.
First off, I dispute the involuntary part of the manslaughter charge - this isn't a car crash where the death was wholly unintentional. He punched that kid hard enough to cause significant brain damage - that's not an accident.
That doesn't necessarily follow, Jay. How much damage a single punch can do depends partly on the target. The same punch that killed this guy might only stagger another guy.
That's a nit, however. The article says the goblin wasn't originally charged with manslaughter -- he was (properly and correctly) charged with murder. He plea-bargained down to involuntary manslaughter, which carries a sentence of "no more than five years" in South Carolina.
Wolf,
What I mean is that the first action - throwing a punch - was performed with the specific intent of causing injury, as opposed to an actual accident.
From my feeble recollections it does seem like involuntary manslaughter would fit - arguing that he threw the punch not to kill but to wound - yet somehow a year and a half doesn't exactly seem fitting, does it?
You're right, it doesn't fit the actual crime. Unfortunately, South Carolina's murder statute (isn't it nice when states post their laws online :-) )is worded in ways that make this case a problem. A good attorney in front of a sympathetic jury could easily get the goblin off on a murder charge, and even manslaughter would be iffy. The prosecutor probably took involuntary manslaughter as the best he could get. It wasn't a choice between the sentence he deserved and the one he got; it was, as often happens, a choice between what he got and nothing at all.
I tried explaining it to a coworker this way:
Hate crime law criminalizes the motive behind the crime.
But only certain motives that are supposed to be extra bad.
Who cares what the motive is? The act is the crime, not the thought.
Who cares what the motive is? The act is the crime, not the thought.
I wish it were that simple.
I really, really do.
But it's not. There are situations where motive matters -- the difference between "assault" and "assault with intent to kill," for example. Or between manslaughter and murder. Or between an innocent dupe and an active accomplice in a scheme to defraud. Taking motive into account is the right thing to do in some cases.
What is never right is the justice system viewing either the suspect or the victim as a member of a group, instead of as an individual. All should be equal before the law -- both the accused, and the victim(s). No special treatment for anyone, regardless of race, color, creed, etc.
Two years for murder, kids getting suspended for bringing an empty shotgun shell from vacation at a wild west show to school, etc... Too many insanities to even count. I sometimes wonder if things like this are going to lead to people hitting a saturation point and rebounding the other way.
How far it'll go before people stand up and say no, however, is still in doubt. That's why I'm in full support of anything that advances the science of space travel. I'd love it if I could live long enough to see people abandon this rock as a lost cause. I'd love it more if we could make it not such a lost cause, but I think space travel is more realistic.
Like Robert Heinlein said: When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
My favorite thing about this is that the bill is named after James Byrd & Matthew Sheppard; two crimes in which each and every defendant/perp is either going to spend every day of their lives behind bars or are awaiting their turn before old sparky (I know, wrong state, still funny). Net result of this bill towards the cases which its PR campaign was based upon: not a single extra day in prison for anyone.
Ah, but it makes liberals with guilty consciences feel better, and after all, isn't that what's most important?
"Who cares what the motive is? The act is the crime, not the thought."
Thought Crime. Coming soon to a Legislature near YOU!
Just to add a couple of items of perspective here. The 'victim', was underage, and drinking in a bar in the wee hours of the morning. Both subjects were 'legally drunk'. The offender did not hit the victim hard enough to cause brain damage. The drunken offender, hit the drunken victim, who staggered, fell, and hit his head on a concrete curb in the parking lot, thus causing the damage which led to the loss of his life.
Is it a tragedy that a young man lost his life before it really got started? Yes. Does the 'kid' who caused it live with remorse every day of his life? Yes.(I've seen his face, and it's haunted)
Should the government pass a law that says that a crime is a crime, unless of course, you're thinking something that the government considers 'bad' when you commit the crime, which makes it extra bad, and you should receive a stiffer penalty? No! That seems to me, to be leading dangerously down the path to thought control, in that motivations for the crime which are considered 'bad' or 'wrong' by the government are taken into consideration.
Punish a perpetrator for the crime itself, but don't try to control what people think, this is still America, right?
All that being said, one of your initial insights is most telling. It's the system itself that is broken, where the Solicitor, instead of prosecuting the actual crime and charge, went for the guaranteed conviction of a lesser plea deal instead. Can you say political aspirations?
Casey
I agree with you - it's absurd to appeal and to get to qualify such a crime as an involuntary manslaughter. The intent was clear maybe possibly considered as not a direct one at the beginning, meaning he knew, he could kill the boy, but didn't involve it in his consideration. And you can classify this however you like, but certainly without a use of a word "involuntary"... So if the criminal justice is so incapable of being effective maybe some harder legislation should come into force. Although to exempt only the gay community is not a very fortunate decision - I think it boarders with a positive discrimination. Ella
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