Scylla has a better point than mine, but the guy didn’t exactly attack him because he was gay.
He attacked him because he thought he was being sexually harassed, and he thought the guy’s motive for sexually harassing him was that he was gay.
Not that it makes beating someone to death with a baseball bat any better, and certainly the guy richly deserves some prison time, but his motive wasn’t hatred of gays - only of people who sexually harassed him.
Yes, it was wrong and horrible. But I think most people, when they hear the term “gay-bashing”, think of someone going out to seek out and attack gay men or women, just because they are gay.
As I say, I don’t think this really makes any difference in the crime, but it isn’t exactly black and white.
Just in the interest of keeping the story from getting too sensationalized, he wasn’t beaten to death. This is a case of assault and battery - not murder. The victim is still very much alive.
Would it be any better if he returned w/ the bat and beat the living crap out of the guy for no reason in particular? At the very least you can understand the reason (the person is homophobic or more likely IMHO was very insulted and maybe even threatened in what he perceived as a homosexual come on) in htis case while if beaten for no reason it would leave many questions for the victom.
How was justice not served? He beat the shit out of a guy with a baseball bat, and now he’ll be spending the next decade locked up. While many college students are having what they consider the most fun and enjoyable years of thier life, this guy will be sitting in a cell somewhere for 10 years, 10 years he can never get back, 10 years of a life he only has one chance to lead. He has been deprived now and forever of his younger years. Sounds like a pretty tough punishment to me
He committed assault and battery and was convicted for those acts. If you think assault and battery should merit longer punishment, talk to your state representatives. The mens rea (intent) requirement for these crimes is that the person acted with either the purpose or with the substantial certainty of causing bodily injury to another. Why he had that purpose is of no consequence, unless it is a mitigating factor or a complete defense (i.e. self-defense, defense of a 3rd party, etc.)
I can see how one might argue that people who commit crimes for frivolous reasons might in theory be more dangerous, since they are more likely to attack again, as compared to someone who committed a once-in-a-lifetime crime of passion. If we were in GD, I might ask for some cites to studies or figures to explore that argument, but we’re in the Pit so I’ll leave it at speculation. But it’s my opinion that prison ought to be rehabilitative, and therefore the reasons behind someone having committed the crime ought to be dealt with there.
Either way, 10 years sounds about right to me for this crime.
Shodan and Scylla, it seems evident that at some point the guy made anti-gay comments to his victim, whether it be before or during the beating. I’d say that makes it a hate crime.
And jkusters, regardless of whether he intended to terrorize the campus, I’ve no doubt he did. Do you really think the GLBT community on that campus feels safe?
He used a damned baseball bat - a weapon which allowed him to inflict far more damage than he could have with fists alone. He should have been charged with attempted murder. The fact that you can find sympathy that he’ll be “deprived now and forever of his younger years” speaks volumes about you.
I didn’t see that in the article, and it looks to me more like the guy is a total psycho rather than just a homphobe. It seems a wildly senseless act and the described motivation almost beside the point. He might as well have whacked him in the head for having a pimple for all the sense it makes.
Deliberately searching out gay people to beat up is a hate crime. Senseless acts of violence are senseless acts of violence regardless of the circumstance.
IMO (and that’s all I’m going on here) it’s a hate crime if I would be safe in a room alone with the guy and you would not.
I don’t think I’d feel any safer than you in a room alone with this particular nutjob.
Does that make sense?
And if we still disagree, do you see where I’m coming from?
No, no, no, I’m not trying to justify the attack. But “looking into his stall” is more likely to be misunderstood than “talking to him.”
From the original linked article:
Again, I’m not trying to excuse the attack in any way, but the perpetrator was a whole foot shorter than the victim. He’d’ve had to be a nutjob indeed to go after Love with his fists.
I beg to differ. I think that if an attack was motivated by hatred of a particular group, regardless of whether the victim was sought out, it is (or at least should be) a hate crime.
To put it another way, If this same man spotted a black man in the shower, went berserk and started beating him with a bat while screaming racial epithets at him, I think that would be a hate crime also.
Oh does it now? And what exactly does it say? That I have compassion for criminals? Resounding YES to that, and proud of it! If spending 10 years in prison wasn’t bad, we wouldn’t put people there for punishment would we? I don’t like seeing bad things happen to anybody even if they’re bad people themselves. I most definitely have sympathy for criminals, because I believe people commit criminal acts most often because of the way they were raised, and other circumstances mostly out of their control. A deterrent still needs to be present, so our punishment of criminals serves hopefully as one of those factors that makes people less likely to commit some crimes. But I don’t believe in revenge, and for many people in today’s America, “justice” is just a codephrase for the revenge they seek.
I know people need to punished for deterrence, and hopefully someday our penal system will truly endeavor to rehabilitate people rather than just tuck them away in a hole because they don’t like the sight of them.
Personally, I find taking joy in the misery of others, and wishing more misery upon them to be sick and twisted. Criminal punishment is a regrettable necessity, not something we should take pleasure in. I never said he should not have been punished, I in fact said that I felt the sentence was appropriate, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling bad about someone’s situation even if they did bring it on themselves.
If you happened to be reading into my remarks that I was more sympathetic to the criminal than to the victim, then you were in error. I didn’t really think I had to spell out the obligatory remarks of sympathy to the victim which everybody already shares. I simply think that there’s some sympathy to be found for anybody’s misery, both criminal and victim. Probably a good thing I feel that way, since I’m planning on applying to work with the MO public defenders office after graduating from law school next year.
There seem to be a few questions here which are more complicated than “how is this not a hate crime.”
Assuming that there should be hate crimes, is this one?
Yes, although I am nearly swayed by Scylla’s argument.
According to the law as written, should this be a hate crime?
Probably not. It’s a poorly written law. One would hope that the legislature learns from its mistake. Sometimes things need to be tested to see if they’re going to work. One would also hope that the jury did their job which was seeing if the crime fit the law as written and didn’t vote not guilty because they were latently homophobic.
Should there be hate crime laws?
This is GD material or maybe appropriate for a different Pit thread.
As others have said, at least the psychopath is out of society for a while.
How about a psychotic homophobe? I mean, seriously - he beats a man with a baseball bat because he talked to him and/or looked at him in a shower. How can that not be homophobic - the very definition of the word!
But he didn’t - he beat him because he perceived him to be gay. What Love did was innocent, at best an invasion of privacy, but Price beat him with a baseball bat because he thought the guy was hitting on him. That’s not “self-defense,” that’s ugly, ugly homophobia, combined, granted, with the fact that the guy seems to be a bit nutso.
I wholeheartedly disagree. What he committed, intentionally or not, was an act of terrorism against that entire campus, and that merits its own punishment, IMHO.
And I say you wouldn’t be safe in a room with this guy if he perceived you to be gay. It’s not like he randomly snapped on a random passer-by just because he was psycho - he snapped because he thought the guy was gay. Period.
I see your point, but as one of the victims of this kind of terrorist action, I wholeheartedly disagree.
This thread brought back a very ugly memory… About ten years ago I was given the beating of a lifetime by six enormous skinheads, three of them with baseball bats, as a result of my being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were looking for a guy I knew and was friendly with, who they found in a pub just when I was chatting with him, and that was enough for them to haul the both of us out into the street and give us a truly savage beating that could well have killed either of us.
I can’t remember now what their problem was with that guy, some jealousy over a girl I think, but what I don’t understand is why the brutality inflicted on us should be regarded as somehow worse if the motivation for it had been gay-bashing. In both cases, surely the thugs should end up with the same punishment, hopefully severe, and one that is proportionate to the violence and harm inflicted on the victim, not related to the victim’s perceived or actual sexuality / ethnicity / whatever.
I guess what I’m wondering is why is the existing law on assault / ABH / GBH / etc is considered not enough to protect gays and other groups, but good enough for everyone else? Why does the law have to say “If you half-kill someone we’ll punish you this much, and if you do it because he’s gay (or you thought he was gay) we’ll punish you this much more.”?
Now don’t get me wrong - I’m not really complaining about the bias, although I would like to know why it’s there. As far as I’m concerned, the more punishment a violent criminal gets, so much the better. But I do think that if they were repaid in their own coin to start with - if they got the real punishment from the law that they so richly deserve - then there’d be no need to invent notions of hate crime to take up the slack for certain subsets of cases.
God, if I were in charge I’d have six strapping policemen thrash the buttocks off of every bastard who dared to take a goddamned baseball bat to another human being, regardless of whatever motive was in their fucked-up excuses for minds! No special cases.
Btw, calling such depressingly-everyday moronic thuggery “terrorism” does seem a bit of a stretch.
I suppose I react to this as I would to a woman who beat a man with a baseball bat for peeking into the shower. It would be a gross overreaction, to say the least, but it would not be any worse than if she beat him to steal his wallet, and I would not say that she was necessarily a lesbian who was motivated by hatred of straight males.
Price didn’t seek him out to beat him because he was gay. He didn’t beat any other gays with a baseball bat, just the one he thought (wrongly) was sexually harassing him. IOW, the motivation for the attack was not sexual orientation, just sexual harassment.
It was wrong, he deserves to be in prison, he is a dangerous felon - all of that. Nothing could excuse or condone what he did. But he was not motivated by a hatred of gays, just a hatred of being peeked at in the shower. He probably has a small dick, and was afraid word would get out.
It is rather similar to a gay guy beating his lover for (wrongly) believing he is cheating on him. It is not homophobia - it is an overreaction to a case of mistaken identity.
And as others have said, I don’t see what labelling this a “hate crime” adds. “Hard cases make bad law”, as they say.
Would you say that Price was filled with hatred for the visually impaired, because the guy he beat couldn’t see without his glasses? Should he serve an extra ten years for that?
RexDart said, “He committed assault and battery and was convicted for those acts. If you think assault and battery should merit longer punishment, talk to your state representatives.”
The state representatives said that “hate crimes” deserve a longer sentence. This was as blatant a hate crime as I’ve ever seen, and they didn’t punish him accordingly. I think that’s the point Esprix is trying to make.
With all due respect, I would feel safer than Esprix would in a room with this nutjob. If he had percieved me to be “sexually harassing” him, his response would have been quite different.