This is the first thing I wondered when reading the story. In a sad irony, the Stonewall could get into some serious trouble as a result of the gaybashing.
Let’s go back to the original subject for a second; gay bashing in a gay bar - not really the ‘Ultimate Irony,’ is it? It’s certainly where I’d go to bash gays.
THIS lSN’T FUCKING IRONIC
I was wondering when this thread would turn to the meaning of “irony”. I’m amazed it has taken this long. 
No.
Of course the crime is not a crime until it’s a conviction, etc etc.
But that’s not that only way we can approach this. We can discuss whether the facts, as reported, are legally sufficient for a hate crime. Obviously each fact has to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury or judge. There may be other facts, aggravating or mitigating, that we don’t know.
But what we can do is say: based on what we know right now, are the facts sufficient for a jury to reach a conviction. If the jury believed every fact that’s been reported, would it be enough for a conviction?
That was the question I believed Morgenstern asked. And in fact we can see it’s a key question. If the proposed law quoted by Merneith, were an actual law, then the answer to the factual question is clearly ‘yes.’ But that law doesn’t yet exist. So the question becomes a bit more interesting. And I do not agree it can be confidently answered ‘yes,’ as tdn did, without some thought.
Who the hell cares? You seriously think that in the wake of a news story referring to a specific legal charge, when someone asks, “But is that language alone strong enough to make it a hate crime?” that he’s asking some amorphous bullshit about what this Internet community “feels?” Absurd. Ridiculous. And I can’t believe you don’t see that.
I am not a New York lawyer. When I asked that question, I had no idea what the law in New York was. I thought there were two or three possibilities:
[ul]
[li]tdn was bullshitting[/li][li]tdn has some specific knowledge of the law as written[/li][li]tdn has some specific knowledge of factually similar prior cases[/li][/ul]
So I didn’t leap up and say, “Bullshit!” I asked, without rancor or snark:
And your response was to attck me.
“Less snarikly?”
Again, what I said was: “Could you provide a bit more detail on why you’re so sure?” How is that remotely snarky?
Wrong. As i explained above and will repeat for emphasis: my standard is, “If the alleged facts are all taken as true, does it constitute a crime?” If that’s close to anything, it’s about the same as a probable cause standard, which certainly out to exist if here’s been an arrest.
What a load of shit. Show me those two cases, where I treated Democrats and Republicans differently. Show me. I extend exactly the same standard, always. Show me where I didn’t, or retract that claim.
Since you asked, and all that.
This is what I’m questioning. I don’t know if I agree that it’s a question of fact for the jury to resolve. I’m leaning towards the idea that it’s legally insufficient. If the jury’s only evidence was, “The accused said, ‘Get away from me faggot! I don’t like gay people. Don’t pee next to me,’ and shortly thereafter demanded money and assaulted him when he refused to provide it,” then could a reasonable jury conclude that the victim was chosen because of his sexual orientation?
This kind of situation is precisely what that proposed law of yours is intended to remedy. It allows the jury to make the presumption. Absent that, can a reasonable reach the conclusion?
Here’s why I’m leaning towards ‘no.’
A fact must be proved ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ This means that the fact-finder must eliminate any reasonable hypothesis other than guilt. Where conflicts in the evidence exist, the fact-finder is entitled to disregard any or all parts of the conflicting evidence.
But what the fact-finder can’t do is create evidence where none exists. Here, that fact-finder can find that the accused said “'Get away from me faggot! I don’t like gay people. Don’t pee next to me.” But how does that prove that the victim was chosen for his sexual orientation? In other words, if the punks were prepared to rob anyone, and didn’t wait until a gay man was the target, it’s not a hate crime.
In People v Diaz, the accused shouted gay slurs while attacking the victim and told police that decided to take out his anger on a gay man. That clearly is sufficient.
In People v. Uthman, the accomplice and girlfriend testimony established that the accused pallned to vandalize a synagogue because of animus towards Jews. In People v. Assisi, the accused had admitted he burned a synagogue because he was angry that a Palestinian child had been shot by the Israeli Army.
In People v Fox the accused used gay chat rooms to convince gay men to meet him; he showed up with two accomplices to rob them. Note that his motive was robbery only – he did not injure the men. But it was undisputed that he targeted gay men “because it was easy to get them to agree to meet.” He asked the court to set aside his hate crime conviction because his motive was just robbery, not injury. But because he was clearly picking his victims because they were gay:
So we can see here that what’s critical is the evidence that the victim was chosen because he was gay. And there has to be some positive evidence to support that.
I can’t find a single conviction on such thin evidence as we have here.
Obviously, if it turns out he said some other things during the assault, or under police questioning, then it becomes a slam dunk. But now… I don’t know that I see it.
It’s totally ironic. You left out the part of the verbal exchange where the gay man hit on his attacker saying “I’ve got ten thousand spoons but all I need is a fork.” And we all know what fork stands for.
Bricker, how do you assess the above exchange, plus the immediately following assault and robbery in light of People v Fox? Even if somehow he wasn’t in that particular place on purpose, i.e., didn’t know he had wandered into a gay bar (a place where plentiful gay men can be readily found to victimize), it does appear Carver was asked if he was gay, before they proceeded to assault and rob him.
So, as I see this, the opinion here is that the hate portion of this crime rests on the thug using the f----t word one time. Am I missing something else?
deleted.
You know, I can’t speak for blacks where the word n----r is concerned, but speaking as a gay male I’d actually rather see it written “faggot” than “f----t” when it’s being quoted. The redacting gives it more power.
Two straight guys go into the most famous gay bar in the world, and hang out in the bathroom. When a guy comes in alone they ask him if he’s gay, and when he answers that he is they call him a faggot and try to intimidate him into giving them money. And when he refuses and tries to leave they jump on him and punch him.
There’s much more here than just calling someone a faggot. The entire situation strongly suggests that they were deliberately seeking out a confrontation with a gay man and either humiliate or hurt him.
That’s a critical difference, I think. It’s much more difficult now to escape the notion that the identify of the vicitm as gay was intended.
So based on that, I’d answer the original question, “No,” but armed with this additional level of detail, I’d say THAT is sufficient, if believed, to find guilt.
No. The exchange:
“Are you gay?”
“Heh heh – do you know where you are?”
“A gay bar.”
Is a key aspect. That, combined with the faggot comment, supports an inference that sexual identity was the factor in the attack. The attacker acknowledges he’s in a gay bar, which vitiates the alternate inference that he simply chose the location at random.
My only gripe with that summary is the assumption that because Stonewall is the most fanous gay bar in the world, we can impute that knowledge to a couple of thugs… who, I’m guessing, don’t play eagerly along at home when “Jeopardy” airs.
But we can substitute proof of their actual knowledge in the latest version of the attck, where they admit they know they’re in a gay bar.
I can certainly see see that point. I’m just not real comfortable with inferences when it comes to criminal convictions.
Juries are asked to infer the intent of defendants ALL the time in criminal trials. It’s the difference between murder and manslaughter, for example.
Intent is almost always a matter of inference. Juries are always told, for example, that a person may be presumed to intend the ordinary consequences of his actions. That allows us to criminalize acts without needing detailed confesssions to convict someone.
And remember too that the inference is not mandatory. The jury MAY infer – the record supports the inference. It doesn’t compel it.
This, in other words, is where Polycarp thought we were way back when he started talking. This is the point at which we can say, “Yes, it’s a hate crime,” knowing full welll that the jury may find differently or that additional facts may come to light to change things. But with what we know now, and assuming the jury believed it all, there is legally sufficient evidence to convict on the hate crime.
Huh?
While i agree that it is reasonable to infer from the whole incident that sexual identity was a factor in the attack, i don’t really understand why this new and slightly altered set of details is any more supportive of such an inference than the original set of details. Why is the particular scenario that you’ve laid out here so compelling, where the other was not? All you’ve demonstrated here is that reasonable people can reasonably differ on what constitutes a reasonable inference.
Which sort of negates the fairly black-and-white line you’ve been trying to suggest is possible in cases like this. The law itself might be very specific on the criteria that need to be met for a hate crime, but when one of the factors in its specificity is jurors drawing a reasonable inference, the whole notion of objectively correct and incorrect decisions is basically out the window.