Hate Crimes after Obama

[babylonsister]

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2010/12/1/9237/44801

Hate Crimes after Obama
by Steven D
Wed Dec 1st, 2010 at 09:23:16 AM EST


Many people (primarily Republican politicians) objected to the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act last November, for a variety of reasons. The principle opposition to the bill didn't want sexual orientation added as a protected class.

However the law that Congress passed and President Obama signed did much more than extend federal protection to the victims of crimes committed because of their sexual orientation. It also expanded the scope of the prior 1969 federal hate crimes law, which previously was restricted only to hate crimes committed against victims "engaging in a federally-protected activity, like voting or going to school." The Matthew Shepard Act as it has been come to be known also gives the Department of Justice and the FBI "greater ability to engage in hate crimes investigations that local authorities choose not to pursue."

That last point is critical, and we are starting to see the results of increasing federal protections for the victims of these acts of terror.

snip//

Hate crimes do indeed leave scars, whether the crime is the directed against Christians, Jews or Muslims, members of the LGBT community or members of racial or ethnic minorities like this disabled Navaho man who had a swastika burned into his arm with a coat hanger among other things done to him in Farmington New Mexico.

William Hatch, 29, Paul Beebe, 26 and Jesse Sanford, 25, are said to have branded a swastika on the 22-year-old Navajo man's arm in April using a coat hanger heated on a stove.

Prosecutors say the men then shaved another swastika on the back of the victim's head and used marker pens to scrawl on his body, including 'KKK', 'White Power', a pentagram and a sexually graphic image. <...>

Federal prosecutors say they were able to bring the case because the 2009 law eliminated a requirement that a victim must be engaged in a federally protected activity, such as voting or attending school, for hate crime charges to be levelled. <...>

The swastika branding has also put the spotlight back on Farmington, a predominantly white community of about 45,000 residents near the Navajo Nation.

In the past many local authorities simply refused to prosecute such violent acts as hate crimes even if their state had an adequate hate crimes law on the books. Now we don't have to rely upon local authorities to bring these charges when they are appropriate.

And that, my friends, is progress, small though it may seem to some.

[Clio the Leo]

1. kick nt

[Renew Deal]

2. Obama deserves all the credit for this.

Because that's how we do things around here.

[Bluerthanblue]

3. important progress-

k&r.

thanks for posting this.

[DFab420]

4. kicK! nt