Something I found on Digg.com. What do you think? Should Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton say something? Or is that something for someone white to do? How do you think people would react to that white person demanding racial justice from this situation? Attack on girl
The term "hate crime" should be removed from society. A beating is not made more offensive because the races of the perpetrator and the victim are different. The motivation for a crime has no bearing on the heinousness of it.
jesse jackson or sharpton is not gonna do anything cause the victim wasnt black. they claim to be champions of equality but are only if u are black. i dont see them helping any Asians .
Hate Crime . . . More than Likely But The case does not seem strong. . . not DEFINATE IDs and the Mis IDing of the one chick has to be severe but I doubt that will be enough I think convictions will come down . . and life will go on Rocket River
Jesse Jackson is more about helping himself than helping black, white or asian. He cares more about how to shake down companys for money then fighting for equality for everyone.
What is there to say? They arrested a bunch of kids (though it doesn't sound like they managed to catch them all) and they'll probably get convictions. People complain about racial injustice when it looks like the criminals won't be punished.
Since when? We treat pre-meditated crimes different than not. Motivation is and always has been used to determine sentencing.
Exactly, if convicted, the perpetrators will be put in jail for a long time (as are many black criminal defendants). If you read the article, you'd see that the "hate crime enhancement" was a part of the prosecutions case. What is the exact problem here? Al Sharpton hasn't spoken out on it? Al Sharpton is an idiot, why do you even care? he's not goign to change anything.
Probably because it doesn't really matter if they attacked the women because they were white, because two of their names started with the letter L, because they thought their outfits looked stupid, or because they all just had bad breakups and where looking to take it out on the first people they saw. The end result is the same and there is no mitigation. We take into account things like whether a crime was premeditated to see if there are mitigating factors (like you walk in on some guy doing your wife, you should get a reduced sentence if you kick his ass, as you can't reasonably be expected not to act in that situation). If you willfully commit a crime with full knowledge that what you are doing is wrong, the fact that you chose to do it because of the victims race instead of some other reason doesn't really seem to make it worse to me.
thats a legitimate explanation. however many others believe that if you commit a crime when your motivation is some sort of bias which we as a society hope to eliminate perhaps that should be taken into consideration. i happen to agree. but i can respect your viewpoint. the whole notion that a crime is a crime and nothing else matters however is juvenile.
I didn't say NOTHING else matters. What I said was that all hate crimes do is justify the assumption that we're all different. I think it's a sad indictment on our country that some people think a killing or beating is somehow worse because it was a "hate crime." What you guys are saying is that if the poor kid in the Spring incident were 100% white and the kids did the exact same thing to him (except for screaming "white power!") that it wouldn't be as bad of a crime and shouldn't be punished as much. To me that idea is morally repugnant and smacks of paternalism towards those of us who aren't 100% white. If my grandfather is killed, does it make it worse if he was killed because he's a Mexican-American? If so, how can you justify that position?
We'll know for sure what it is when the facts of how the incident started becomes clearer. I think what they're saying is that the Spring incident wouldn't happen as it did if the victim was 100% white. Not many white people in our history have been lynched or dragged through dirt with trucks, but minorities have been. Can you name any cases, in your opinion, where the penalty was perceived to be less because the victim was white among a group of minority perpetrators? If your white ancestor was killed and humiliated because he lived in a black community, then I can understand the position that his death carried a more terrible message. Ideally, all murders should hold equal significance, but we all react to murders on a case by case basis. This allows additional definitions for manslaughter, martyrdom, and terrorism. Today we hold great significance to the 2,992 innocent lives who died during 9/11. It's because the way they died was used to strike fear in all Americans. Hate Crime legislation was designed to prevent the inflicting of fear and humiliation upon any racial group. It arouse from past events from what people did and how our court system passively reacted when it came time to punish them.
A very good case in point for motivation being related to the severity of the crime would be murder. You can get: murder capital murder manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide With a couple of exceptions (as an example crimes can be bumped up if they occur against a police officer or fireman) motive and intent are central to the classification of the crime. As an example, below is the part about murder. Almost the entirety of it deals with motive and situation surrounding the act. [rquoter] In this section: "Adequate cause" means cause that would commonly produce a degree of anger, rage, resentment, or terror in a person of ordinary temper, sufficient to render the mind incapable of cool reflection. "Sudden passion" means passion directly caused by and arising out of provocation by the individual killed or another acting with the person killed which passion arises at the time of the offense and is not solely the result of former provocation. A person commits an offense if he: intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an individual; intends to cause serious bodily injury and commits an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes the death of an individual; or commits or attempts to commit a felony, other than manslaughter, and in the course of and in furtherance of the commission or attempt, or in immediate flight from the commission or attempt, he commits or attempts to commit an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes the death of an individual. Except as provided by Subsection (d), an offense under this section is a felony of the first degree. At the punishment stage of a trial, the defendant may raise the issue as to whether he caused the death under the immediate influence of sudden passion arising from an adequate cause. If the defendant proves the issue in the affirmative by a preponderance of the evidence, the offense is a felony of the second degree. [/rquoter] The same sort of contextual guidelines are in the definition for the other types of murder. The link below is to the Texas Penal Code. If you want to read them all, murder is dealt with in Title 5 Chapter 19 if you want to look it up: http://tlo2.tlc.state.tx.us/statutes/pe.toc.htm
If the Spring incident happened to a white kid because he was a "nerd" or a "goth" does that change the situation? What about if he were rich and the others poor? Vice versa? How about if a Republican killed a Democrat or vice versa out of hatred for their affiliation? Yes, there have been horrible events in our history that have shaped our culture today. Hate Crime Legislation is not going to change that nor is it going to change the bigotry of anyone racist enough to commit such a crime. It obviously didn't stop these teens from committing this act. Therefore, what purpose does it serve? All it does is further the belief that everyone is different and some people are entitled special protection because of those differences. I just don't agree with that.
In none of those instances does the classification of the victim with relation to the perpetrator matter. Those are used to deal with the heinousness of the act itself. I don't think that an act is made more heinous because it was motivated out of racial hatred as opposed to a different type of hatred.
Here is a piece from the murder code in which the classification of the perpetrator with relation to the victim. [rquoter] ยง 19.06. APPLICABILITY TO CERTAIN CONDUCT. This chapter does not apply to the death of an unborn child if the conduct charged is: (1) conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child; [/rquoter] But if you read the 'capital murder' section, almost all of the reasons you get bumped from murder to capital murder deal with the status of the victim.
