dailykos.com — In the Murder of Census Worker Bill Sparkman we now know several key facts - he was naked, bound hand-and-foot with Duct-Tape, Gagged, Blindfolded, Hung (Lynch style) and the word "FED" written on his chest with Felt Tip Pen.What I want to know is - where is the Holy Hell-Fire Outrage of the "America First Gang"??
Sep 26, 2009 View in Crawl 4
endersaveusSep 28, 2009
I was totally being sarcastic ¬______¬
subductionSep 28, 2009
Again, you're putting things in contexts that sound fine, but aren't correct when it comes to the details of the law.>>>there's the "clear and present danger" standard here. A "terroristic threat" has to be directed at a specific place or person.There is, under the law, no such thing as a "clear and present danger standard." That's something that you seem to have invented or are appropriating from something else. And "terroristic threats" do not have to be directed at a specific person, they can be directed at a portion of the population or the entire population in general. If you ride down the street with a megaphone shouting "Someday I'm going to kill me a few homos, so they better stay home, 'cause you never know when that's going to come!" that is a terroristic threat. But let's not be vague here. Terroristic threats are a specific crime that do not have anything directly to do with the whole "terrorist hoopla," as in, it was around and being enforced before the Taliban started climbing the pop charts. USLegal.com has as good an encapsulation as anyone of the law:"A terroristic threat is a crime generally involving a threat to commit violence communicated with the intent to terrorize another, to cause evacuation of a building, or to cause serious public inconvenience, in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror or inconvenience. It may mean an offense against property or involving danger to another person that may include but is not limited to recklessly endangering another person, harassment, stalking, ethnic intimidation, and criminal mischief."The following is an example of a Texas statute dealing with terroristic threats:TERRORISTIC THREAT(a) A person commits an offense if he threatens to commit any offense involving violence to any person or property with intent to: cause a reaction of any type to his threat[s] by an official or volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies; place any person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury; prevent or interrupt the occupation or use of a building; room; place of assembly; place to which the public has access; place of employment or occupation; aircraft, automobile, or other form of conveyance; or other public place; cause impairment or interruption of public communications, public transportation, public water, gas, or power supply or other public service; place the public or a substantial group of the public in fear of serious bodily injury; orinfluence the conduct or activities of a branch or agency of the federal government, the state, or a political subdivision of the state.As you can see, the specific legal idea of the "terroristic threat" encapsulates the offense reflected in bias crimes, especially as it applies to "place the public or a substantial group of the public in fear of serious bodily injury."Now, as far as the second part is concerned, the scope and application of hate crime law is a matter of interpretation on the part of prosecutors and law enforcement. If that seems scarily indistinct to you then you have to remember that judgments about what charges to fit to situations and circumstances are being made in almost every single crime. Was it murder 1, 2, or manslaughter? Was it possession or possession with intent to distribute? Was this a guy killing the black guy nailing his wife, or committing a murder with the specific intent of putting the entire African American community in fear of serious bodily injury?"Thats exactly what detectives and district attorneys are for.And as for where the line is being drawn on what groups are defined as protected groups, that law is constantly being re-evaluated as well, but is getting more stable now. For better or worse, there seems to be a consensus that protected groups are generally defined by characteristics that people cannot change about themselves. You can stop being a federal worker, you can stop being an adulterer, but you cannot stop being black or gay or a woman.As such, even in the worst case scenario I don't believe the FED hanging can be technically prosecuted as a hate crime because, as you say, being a federal employee is not, nor would it ever be, a protected group.Your rape example is a good one, because it does sit close to where the lines are being drawn and re-drawn now. Gender and gender identity have recently been added to many statutes as a protected group. But as with all protected groups that does not mean that any crime that interacts with gender is automatically a hate crime. As above, that is a job for the investigators and the prosecutors to decide in considering the specific circumstances.An example for each? Okay -- a woman who is raped entering her apartment, or at work, or in any one of 99 percent of situations in which a woman is raped or even gang raped would likely be prosecuted as a rape. But lets say a woman wins a court case to overcome discrimination and take a job at a traditionally all-male profession. Then one night, as she's leaving work, she is grabbed by five masked men. As they are leaving one says, "We're just the ladies' welcoming committee sweetheart. You tell any of your lady friends who want to work here that they'll have to meet with the welcoming committee first." That would likely be prosecuted as a bias crime, because not only was it a first-degree rape, it was also designed to be a terroristic threat to a protected group. In other words, a bias or hate crime.Yes?
jareth86Sep 29, 2009
"where is the Holy Hell-Fire Outrage of the "America First Gang"?"Are you kidding me. They were the ones who f**king did it!
atarioSep 30, 2009
That's the neat thing about creating a general environment of hate -- no one can prove anything or connect you directly to anything. It's pretty convenient when it comes to lawyering about it.
michaelcasoOct 1, 2009
How come everyone on Digg suffers from chronic missed reply? Where is the ridicule people?
sexyteenagerOct 3, 2009
A hate crime is a crime committed because the perpetrator hates a certain attribute, ie. homosexuality, race, affiliation with a certain group, associated with the victim. This attribute that the perpetrator hates becomes the defining characteristic of the victim essentially the victim becomes the embodiment of that which the perpetrator hates.All other crimes can and do fall under different headings. Also the motivation for murder is never irrelevant ....
dandoniaOct 6, 2009
Wow, digg's intelligence rating went down big time.For the benefits of all those who dugg lurrch1 and dugg down novenator here is a little explanation of his his comment.The laws of america state that skin colour doesn't matter anymore and the media see a black president and act like race is really not an issue anymore but we all know better. Imagine D.L. Hughley saying "AmeriKKKa where skin colour no longer matters" or picture it in a GTA game.
thejokkerOct 7, 2009
Wait so it's worse to kill someone because he's black/gay/etc than if i'm just a psycho or because I have a passionate personal hate for him?Why don't we just say, if you kill someone you go to jail for a very long time. You will die in jail. The guy who kills because he hates homos sits next to the guy who kills because god tells him to and they share a bench with the guy who only kills people who have made personal transgressions against his cat.Sound fair?
pakobedejoOct 8, 2009
This account has been closed by the user
gavcomedyOct 25, 2009
There is no such things as a hate crime. A crime is a crime.
rjeyNov 24, 2009
Hate against yourself in this case.Once again the "dailykos" and left wing nut jobs were proven to be wrong. Chalk up another fabricated "hate crime" against conservatives.How shocked I am.<a class="user" href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2009/11/census_worker_killing_probe_ne.html" rel="nofollow">http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2009/ ...</a>