Hate crime or good ole boys' fun?

[Soxy]

Really sad story.

 

It's a pretty long story--but definitely worth the read. This is just pathetic; something you expect to hear about in a history book.

[southsider2k5]

And this is exactly why there should be hate crime legislation. This is a crime that happened soley because the guy was black. If he was white, it never would have happened.

[Palehosefan]

"There are a few areas in Texas that have kind of bypassed the civil rights era," said Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas branch of the NAACP. "Linden is one of those. It's an island of the '50s up there."

 

Thats very true, but I really hope everyone doesn't think its limited to Texas, or even to the South. There are dumbass people everywhere, it just seems to be more of an issue in small towns in the south. Whats just is bad is picking on someone retarded like that, they are so innocent, how f***ing evil do you have to be to do that?

 

Most of the defendants' families declined requests for interviews about the case. But Martha Howell, Hicks' mother, said her son never touched Johnson and didn't deserve to be punished.

 

"These boys' names are ruined for life," Howell said. "And [Johnson] is better off today than he's ever been in his life. He roamed the streets, the family never knew where he was. Now in the nursing home he's got someone to take care of him."

 

That is not how Johnson sees it.

 

Gee I wonder where the kids got the racism from? :rolly

Edited June 5, 2005 by Palehosefan

[jackie hayes]

Gee I wonder where the kids got the racism from?  :rolly

The whole article is filled with such absurd statements. "The black boy was somewhere he shouldn't have been, although they brought him out there." What do you say to something as mind-numbingly stupid as that?

 

"As Johnson lay unconscious, vomiting and gagging, Amox and three other young men...debated whether to call an ambulance, authorities said. Instead, they loaded Johnson into a pickup truck and drove him 2 miles down a little-used dirt road, tossing him next to a public dump, on top of the nest of fire ants." How the f*** do you make the transition in yr head from ambulence to fire ants?!?!

 

But, as I understand it, it's not enough to show that the crime "happened soley because the guy was black" (in ss2k5's words) -- you have to show that the crime was motivated by the fact that the guy is black. And the article doesn't have much detail on the motivation for the crimes themselves (why he was punched, or how they decided to drop him on the ant nest). So from the article, I'm not sure it is a hate crime. To me, that doesn't make it any less horrid, but I understand that many disagree.

[Spiff]

I don't think it matters why someone commits a given crime, which is why I don't believe in hate crime legislation. Whatever terrible acts you commit you should pay the price for, but knocking another 10 years onto the sentence for skin color won't wipe out racism.

[Rex Kickass]

Every crime is a hate crime. Motivation is not a crime although it can and should play into the severity of a sentence.

 

Hate crime legislation is a bad idea and takes away your right to think freely.

[Texsox]

It is reasonably impossible to *know* with 100% certainty, what motivated someone. For that reason, I am against "hate crime" legislation. I like things that can be proven factually in a court of law.

 

And flip this around, they should be punished *less* if the victim was a good ol' boy like themselves??

[southsider2k5]

It is reasonably impossible to *know* with 100% certainty, what motivated someone. For that reason, I am against "hate crime" legislation. I like things that can be proven factually in a court of law.

 

And flip this around, they should be punished *less* if the victim was a good ol' boy like themselves??

 

Excuse me for being bitter but if a couple of these guys took each other out, they would be doing the rest of us a favor.

[Texsox]

Excuse me for being bitter but if a couple of these guys took each other out, they would be doing the rest of us a favor.

 

Ain't that the truth.

[tonyho7476]

I'm more disturbed that the person was retarded, than black. Who would ever punch a person like that? You have to be a special kind of sick f*** to treat people like this. Hopefully bad things will happen to them in their future.

 

And I have never understood the KKK or skin-heads or other hate groups. How can you spend so much time hating others? It seems like such a waste of time. I don't get it. I might say I don't like Italians, but then I would just try to avoid them...not spend time trying to hurt or kill them.

[Texsox]

In real life I have a lot of patience. The only time I go ballistic in a hurry is when someone is being a bully and taking advantage of someone. That just pisses me off to no end.

[JUGGERNAUT]

Why am I not surprised that some of you would jump on hate crime legislation & overlook the most obvious flaw in this case: the legal process.

 

Why are you surpised that the jury sided with the perbs? Does this not happen in courts across America? Why in IL alone a young college woman was raped, video-taped, spit on, written on & every sexually abusive thing you can think of & they got off. This even after the fact that most of them had fled the country when the case came to trial.

 

Hate crimes legislation isn't going to change this. It's simply going to restrict our free speech & assembly rights greater. Curtail freedom as a knee jerk reaction to some event. We've had enough of that since 9/11.

 

The legal system itself is at fault. Just as it was in the rape trial in IL.

Guilt must be proven with facts. It can't be assumed even if a defense argument flies in the face of common sense. That's the problem. The defense will make an argument based on the law to reduce the association of guilt to the defendant. Common sense doesn't matter. Only the law.

 

In the rape trial case they used the video against her to assert that she was a willing participant. The presence of drugs didn't matter because she had a some history of drug use at some time. Even Clinton did I guess.

So even though common sense tells us that the odds of a woman being a willing participant in such acts are extremely small the facts could not reduce that probability to zero. Isn't reasonable doubt a wonderful thing?

 

In this case there's nothing in the report that mentions the words of the man being forced or coerced. Thus there is reasonable doubt that his actions leading up to the punch in the face were consensual. Which leaves the punch in the face that knocked him out cold as the only real crime. Of course I can see how the other men could collaborate a story that it was in self defense or that he some how provoked the action.

 

Which then leaves us with the resulting action of dumping him on the side of the road on top of fire ants. Well there is nothing in the law that compels one to give a ride to another. So if you buy the argument that the men was there under his own free will then he's pretty much responsible for getting home on his own & they could make the argument since they didn't know where he lived they just decided to dump him on the side of the road. Case closed. The man was stung by fire ants by chance due to the neglectful, unkind but otherwise lawful actions of the other men.

 

Now again this flies in the face of common sense. What are the odds that a 42 yr old mentally retarded black men consented to such a trip, provoked a man to punch him in the face, & then was accidentally left on top of a fire ant hill when they dumped him? Extremely low but then again not ZERO. Reasonable doubt strikes again!

 

So how do you reform this? With rules governing the conduct of judges when it comes to instructing the jury. Reasonable doubt is important but then so is common sense. If the odds overwhelming favor guilty in tems of common sense then the judge should instruct the jury with that understanding. Non-zero probablity should not mean reasonable doubt.

That's not reasonable. Reasonable doubt should be something closer to 50/50.

 

If I were the judge on this case I would instruct the jury as follows:

If you believe that this 42 yr old man trully had the functioning capacity of a 12 yr old then you must consider all of the actions to be non-consensual.

If that is your consensus belief then this man was a victim of kidnapping, & assault. From that point on whether you belief the resulting actions that left him in a coma were accidental or pre-medidated they were without a doubt a result of the kidnapping & assault & should be sentenced accordingly.

 

Now of course in doing so I've just opened the door to an appeal on the basis for a mis-trial because I was leading the jury. That is where the law must change. Judges need to have greater authority & leeway to advise juries. It should not be a question of whether a judge led a jury. It should be a question of whether a judge grossly led a jury or led a jury in the face of common sense.