Okay, so here’s this dickwad named Stephen Moller hanging outside a bar. Apparently unprovoked he targets a guy named Sean Kennedy, who is described as being “openly gay” (we all know what that means).

He flings an anti-gay slur at him, and then punches him hard enough to down him. Kennedy hits his head on the pavement and dies about 20 hours later. But that’s not enough. Moller, then makes a phone call to one of Kennedy’s friends…


Of course the murderer’s attorney denies any anti gay bias here


Yeah right, except that he used a gay slur before he attacked, not after. And as for the subsequent phone call? Guess they would have us believe that that could be open to interpretation.

And what does the murderer get for this?

And the murderer’s excuse? It was the booze.


No, asshole, you wouldn’t be there if you weren’t a f*cking violent homophobe.

Course you’ll survive. Your sentence is on a par with what people in South Carolina get for abusing animals or cockfighting. Those things are evil enough. Just lucky for you that you didn’t do anything like, oh I donno, kill another human being or you could have been in it a lot deeper.

I hope I never find myself in this kind situation because chances are I would not be the one who ended up dead. Thanks for letting me vent.

http://www.wyff4.com/news/16570947/detail.html

There are times I'm ashamed to be part of the human race. This is one of those times.

I'm with you, brother. Although your post certainly did not make my day, it helps to keep my head out of the So. Cal. sand. Kinda spoiled with the (relative) tolerance out here.

I know. I had to leave home before i fully realized how lucky I am to have a family and friends who were and are totally fine with me and to have been able to live in places where being gay was a minor issue at worst. Things like this, as you say, grab me by the neck pull my head right out of that warm cozy sand. I feel a lot of anger over stuff like this. It's almost like surviver's guilt in a way. Like other people are somehow having to pay my dues for me while I skate. If that makes any sense. I take it very personally.

far be it for me to play devils' advocate, but if he only hit the guy once and the fall is what killed him, he won't be found guilty of murder in any court. reckless (or voluntary) manslaughter, maybe, but not premeditated murder.

With hate-crime enhancements, he'd be looking at 20 years, tops.

But it is BS that this wasn't considered a hate-crime. At least he's going to jail for 2 years, maybe he'll learn to be a bit more open about gay relationships.

Pundits like Alex Jones, Jeff Rense and the Ron Paul's and the Concerned Women for America crowd all complain that a national hate crimes law would violate free speech and be tantimont to a "thought crime". Another reason we need Obama in the White House as he says he supports national hate crime laws. Voting for McCain means a continuation of the hatred and these slap on the wrist kinds of sentences. I'm sure if this cracker in S. Carolina had done this to a white girl, then he'd be sitting in jail doing life...

No sh*t. One of the great Rethug lies about legislation against crimes of intimidation is that it would criminalize offensive speech. It wouldn't unless that speech was deliberately intended to incite violence. I think that kind of speech is illegal already. This kind of crime, where you do violence to a person for no other reason than that you perceive him or her as having an ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation that you don't like needs a special class of its own.

vote republican and fill sc accordingly and eventually it will be legal to kill gays

I've always been on the fence in terms of "hate crimes." I think murder is murder, assault is assault. Where I get really pissed off is when someone attacks another human being which in turn causes their death and they get handed a light sentence. I'm so sick of pig judges who feel they have the right to determine one's life as being worth less than another's. I also feel that a person's actions need to be accounted for and manslaughter certainly shouldn't apply to someone who aggressively attacked another human being resulting in that person's death. I'm curious to know why the charges were dropped from murder to manslaughter in the first place, the article doesn't say. I believe an appropriate charge would be second degree murder or possibly first degree murder seeing as how there appears to be a motive behind the attack. A sentence of at least 10-15 years would give this jerk something to think long and hard about...2 years is not justice.

I used to be against "hate crime" enhancements until I learned more about crime and the law.

Most of the time, you are murdered by someone who knows and dislikes you. Actus Reus and Mens Rea ('guilty crime' and 'guilty mind') are both needed in a murder.

You did the crime? Check.
You were in sufficient control of your own mind to know what you were doing was wrong? Check

now, why did you do it?

Hate Crimes I now find as legal due to the fact that their motive wasn't out of personal greed, in some sort of perverse profit through ending another's life. It's a hate crime because the rationale is, "because they were a minority"... (e.g., "he's a fag", "She's a tranny", "that black man tried to vote/marry a white woman")

The victim did nothing more to anger the assailant than exist. And that to be something so horrid, so abomidable, that they get killed for it, for existing, is why Hate Crime enhancements should exist.

Word