Huffington Post goes Right Wing Nutty in Hate Crime Analysis. Yes, HuffPo.

It's irritating as hell when the neo-cons blather about being against hate crime laws. Stupid garbage typically falls out of their mouths (oh, and this is no small point: the people are almost always persons of privilege, people who are demographically not likely to be victims of a hate crime). They'll toss out the tired, incorrect chirping points of those who hate and those who want to stay in power (they're very often the same people). Without regard for America's hateful history, they'll spout phrases like "all crimes are hate crimes" and "you can't tell what a person's motivation is let alone prosecute it" and "hate crime laws are thought crime laws." If you follow the loony hate crime dialogue of The Right in the United States, you know this. But, it's enraging when the Huffington Post gives credence to this crap as it did when it published Diane Dimond's article on July 21st titled, "Hate is the Name of the Game in Crime."

Partly because reducing racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and other forms of prejudice is so close to my heart. Partly because I had just read this awesome diary by fellow Kossack Maimonides. Partly because according to wikipedia (boldface mine):

The Huffington Post is an American liberal news website and aggregated blog founded by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, featuring various news sources and columnists.

For these reasons, my blood pressure rose while reading a staunchly right wing opinion piece on the current debate regarding hate crime legislation posted on a supposed liberal website. Let me tell you this: The HuffPo's Diane Dimond's opinion about hate crime legislation is not a liberal position, it is a solidly conservative one. Claiming to be liberal but being against including sexual orientation and gender to the federal hate crime statute is akin to saying you are liberal and are also for racially segregated schools. Dimond's avowedly anti-civil rights position is the opposite of being a liberal. Let me count the ways.

Dimond first stupidly asks why we should label as hate crimes the murders of abortion provider Dr. Steven Tiller and the murder of Holocaust Museum security guard Stephen T. Johns when we already have strict laws against murder. It's a ridiculous set-up for the rest of her article. To begin with, doctors who perform abortions are not part of a protected class of persons in any pending hate crime legislation or any American hate crime law. The murder of Dr. Tiller, while fueled by anti-abortion hatred, does not meet the definition of a hate crime, and no person knowledgeable about hate crimes would state otherwise. (Had Dr. Tiller, who was murdered in his church during a worship service, been killed because of anti-Christian hatred, then the perpetrator could have been charged with a hate crime). Current hate crime laws vary from state to state (as outlined in this pdf), but they typically protect persons based on race, color, religion, national origin, and ethnicity. Some state laws include sexual orientation, gender, and disability. None include "abortion doctor" status as a protected class of citizens. You'd expect Arianna Huffington, the Editor-in-Chief at HuffPo, to know this basic fact about hate crime laws before allowing Dimond to publish what she did.

Wingnuts always focus on hate crime murders as a reason to oppose hate crime laws--laws that permit enhanced punishment. So does Dimond and she uses the same wingnutty logic. She asks what difference would it make if the term "hate crime" is attached to a killer's deadly actions. It's a strawman question that requires no critical thinking whatsoever; lack of critical thinking is another common feature of opponents of hate crime laws (which is probably why Democrats vote in bloc [pdf] in support of expanding the federal hate crime law to help aid oppressed minority persons while the GOP overwhelmingly vote against it). The answer to Dimond's rhetorical question is this. Finding someone guilty of a hate crime murder couldn't lead to increased punishment, because life in prison is, well, life in prison. In states with the death penalty, there is no enhanced punishment greater than death. Yawn. OK, but moving beyond the rhetorical question, one must ask: but what about the 99.9% of all hate crimes that aren't homicides? In those cases an enhanced punishment could be handed down to the hate crime convict. Thus, there is no reason to toss aside hate crime laws because enhanced punishment could only be used in 99.9% of cases.

Then Dimond tosses this wingnut doozy:

The first hate crimes legislation in America was passed forty years ago. Yet according to the Southern Poverty Law Center hate groups continue to flourish. The SPLC displays a map of their locations on its web site. There are 84 in California, 66 in Texas, 56 in Florida, 45 in South Carolina, 40 organized hate groups in New Jersey and Georgia, nearly that many in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Alabama and Missouri. Does anyone truly believe the label "Hate Crime" and the additional jail time it tacks on to a sentence deters criminals?

First of all, connecting the SPLC's hate group data to hate crimes creates a false correlation between hate crimes and hate groups. Very few hate crime defendants belong to an organized hate group; some hate crime defendants went to college, happily trying to obtain yet another level of privilege (the privilege that comes with higher education). You don't have to belong to the Westboro Baptist Church to gay-bash, Diane, and you don't have to be a member of a neo-Nazi group to attack a Jew. Second, like it or not, in America there is this right called the freedom to associate. People have the right to belong to a hate group. Third, because hate crimes continue to happen long after hate crime laws went into effect is no reason to repeal them. This from the Q & A section of the Trends In Hate website:

...laws can only reduce, but not eliminate, crime. For example, there are strong laws in the United States prohibiting rape and murder. Despite these laws, rapes and murders continue to occur in America daily. From 1996 through 2005, for instance, there was an average of over 45 homicides in the United States daily. Prohibiting murder has not eliminated it. Yet, people unwaveringly understand the continued need for laws criminalizing such society-destroying behavior. As is the case for all criminal codes, one reason for having hate crime laws is deterrence. Hate crime laws serve the purpose of reducing the frequency of bias-motivated crimes, even though the laws can’t eliminate them. Generally speaking a so-called hate crime enhancement allows for the possibility for greater punishment of a perpetrator than would normally occur had the crime not been motivated by hatred. Added punishment serves as a means of deterring to some extent bias-motivated crimes from taking place in America. This benefits society because, as we’ve described, hate crimes terrorize communities. Additionally, because hate crime perpetrators premeditatively select their victims, increasing the punishment for a hate crime perpetrator makes sense. Why? Because hate crime laws by their definition take into account the motive for the crime; and, perpetrator motivation (or lack thereof) has long played a role in American law for establishing culpability and exacting appropriate punishment. For instance, killing someone is agreed to be more heinous when premeditation occurred as compared to the negligent, unplanned killing of another. This is why planned (first-degree) murders carry harsher punishments than unintentional killings of persons by, say, drunk drivers.

Another reason for hate crime laws to exist is to provide an added measure of protection to groups of people who are made more vulnerable in society because of the prejudices of others. In examining the history of the United States, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans have all been targeted—because of their race or ethnicity—for unfair treatment, discrimination, and worse: violence. This does not mean that only persons of color are made more vulnerable by the prejudice-based criminal acts of others. Anyone can harbor anti-ethnic or racist beliefs and act them out criminally, not just whites. This is why hate crime laws include protected categories (e.g., race) that include everyone, not just one particular group of persons (e.g., people of color). So, for example, hate crime laws in the United States provide protection to Protestants and Muslims, and not merely to those who historically have been discriminated against or otherwise have been targeted in the United States because of their religious affiliation, such as Jews or Catholics. Which groups within a protected category are more vulnerable than others in our society have changed in some respects over time; and, they will likely continue to change as society changes. So hate crime laws which protect everyone are defensible on practical as well as constitutional grounds.

That pretty much rebuts this neo-con talking point that Diane spat out in her article:

Declaring there is hate in a person's heart when they act in a criminal fashion seems to be a shaky proposition to me. We should stick to punishing people for what they do -- not what we believe they were thinking at the time of the crime.

So, Diane, you're saying the premeditated murderer should receive the same punishment as the person who, through recklessness, killed someone in a motor vehicle accident? The logic in your argument means that James Byrd's killers should receive the same punishment as the over-stressed parent who kills his or her infant by inadvertently leaving said infant in a hot minivan after a trip to the grocery store.

Dimond's and Huffington's lack of fact-checking aside (hey, they have deadlines to meet and it's only journalism so it's no big deal), what about the fundamental question: why should a murder, or any crime, ever be labeled and prosecuted as a hate crime? A Black man gets hooked up to a Texas pickup truck and dragged to his death by a clan of white guys simply because the victim was black, why should that motive matter? A gay man gets lashed to a fencepost in Wyoming and is murdered because of his sexual orientation; again, why would the hate motive matter? Dimond actually provides the answer in her own article, but is too dense to see it. She concluded her anti-hate crime legislation screed by stating:

Hate is the name of the game when it comes to crime. We don't need a fancy label on it. We need to figure out how to make it socially unacceptable.

Yes, Diane and Arianna, America does need to figure out how to make hatred socially unacceptable. Thanks for that insightful, "progressive" tidbit. And thanks for the non-progressive obfuscation of the real issues here: race-based, ethnicity-based, religion-based, sexual-orientation based, and gender-based violence and intimidation, all of which are rooted in America's history, are community-destroying acts of domestic terrorism. Set a person of color's home on fire and lace your arson with spray-painted racial slurs, you are letting the entire community know that any person of color could be the next target. You're making all person's of color in that community anxious. You're terrorizing them. You're also letting the whites know they're safe. You do get that Diane, right? You do get that there is white privilege in white-on-color race-based hate crimes (and those types of hate crimes account for a high percentage of all hate crimes according to FBI statistics). You do know that in 2007 84% of all hate crimes were committed by white people, right?

Speaking of white privilege, it is unsurprising that Diane Dimond, who is white, fails to let her readers know that her anti-hate crime legislation stance would have the impact of cementing her white privilege in society. By not maximally stigmatizing (i.e., making socially unacceptable) hate crimes--which is done by labeling them "hate crimes" in code of law, in the media, and in the courtroom, and via enhanced punishment to the convicted hate crime perpetrator--as a white person Diane gets to continue to enjoy her significantly lower-than-you'd-expect risk for being a hate crime victim. Just how low is her risk? According to the graphs shown here, it's pretty much in the gutter. If Diane Dimond is heterosexual (me thinks she is), her risk of being a victim of a sexual-orientation hate crime is also in the gutter. But, you didn't read about that heterosexual privilege in her HuffPost article. You also didn't hear Dimond say that by eliminating hate crime laws, there would be no need to tabulate hate crimes as is now federal law. This is what the wingnuts want--the repeal of the federal act that shows hate crimes actually exist. Without that law, the neo-cons could continue to set Black churches and synagogues on fire, continue to beat Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, and Native Americans, and continue to bash the shit out of GLBT people while denying that America has a race, anti-Semitism or homophobia problem. Nice job HuffPo. The Right will play you like a fiddle (to quote Keith Olbermann).

Thanks too Dimond for repeating the right wing and completely false claim that all crimes are hate crimes ("hate is the name of the game when it comes to crime").

Here, I think, is a sufficient response to the all-crimes-are-hate-crimes lie. Again from Trends In Hate:

The notion that all crimes are hate crimes is a preposterous, indefensible claim made by some who oppose hate crime laws and pending hate crime legislation.

We’ve even seen it said that if hate crimes exist, then crimes not deemed to be hate crimes must be ‘love crimes.’ It’s difficult to fathom that people can be so simplistic and illogical. It is patently false that all crimes are hate crimes. In fact, it is not even true that all violent crimes are hate crimes. The vast majority are not. Where greed or financial desperation are the motives for crimes—as is the case of almost all burglaries, armed robberies, and muggings—there is no hatred toward the victims. Criminals just want their victims’ money. Even when a strong emotion drives a crime—such as a so-called crime of passion—that emotion is generally not hatred. It’s typically something shorter-lived like jealousy or rage. Additionally, when someone kills someone—because of some strong negative emotional state such as rage—generally it is not because they hate some socio-demographic feature of the victim, such as the victim’s race or ethnicity. Typically, it is because the killer became enraged at the victim based on some aspect of their relationship. This is why from 1996 through 2006, the FBI tallied 184,604 homicides in the United States, but only 118 hate crime homicides. Even considering that some hate crime murders were not tallied as such, it is clear the nation’s crime data shows us that very few crimes are hate crimes.

As you can see when perusing through this calendar of recent American history, hate crimes happen every day (except, it appears, on Christmas day). Yet, only a miniscule percentage of all reported crimes are hate crimes. Transforming the quoted figures above, only .06% of all American homicides were hate crime homicides during an eleven-year timeframe. OK, so much for the all-crimes-are-hate-crimes rationale for wanting to keep excluding gender, sexual orientation, and disability from the current federal hate crime amendment.

I was unsurprised to learn someone with an affinity for a white racist website like VDARE would take such interest in Dimond's anti-hate crime legislation viewpoint as to send her a link to the VDARE hate site after praising her for her article. That's exactly what happened. She cross-posted her HuffPo screed on her own website and received this "progressive" comment:

Thanks for this. I discussed in [link to the VDARE hate site removed]

Do you stand by your assertion that Vigilant Eagle is monitoring web sites. Has this appeared anywhere in the MSM? Pretty big story, if documentable.

VDARE is a white racist hate site, by the way, and Dimond apparently has made a fan there.

When you hold the exact same position on expanding the federal hate crime law to include gender, sexual orientation and disability that Senator Jim DeMint holds, you lose a lot of progressive cred. In fact, you come off like a white, heterosexual privileged jackass, just like DeMint who recently said this during the recent hate crime amendment debate in the Senate (one the GOP lost):

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said it was "patently offensive" that violence against one class of victims would be considered worse than violence against others.

Channeling DeMint, Dimond asks this in her article, which is the oft-asked question by many dyed-in-the-wool conservatives:

why should an attack on a homosexual or a minority be worth more punishment than a similar attack on a regular Joe?

The answer: to even the playing field. That is, to reduce the huge gap in the risk for becoming a hate crime victim in the first place. Or put more bluntly, to reduce white, Protestant, heterosexual privilege. That is, to reduce hate by reducing hate-based crimes.

But, of course, these people don't want to lose their societal privilege (or they are too damn dumb to see that they have it).

Diane Dimond offers this beauty of a solution (bracketed material mine):

If someone attacks a gay person let's prosecute them for assault [but not as a hate crime] and demand the judge give the harshest sentence possible.

My God this is embarrassing. OK, so she doesn't get that most judges are, demographically speaking, at a really low risk for being a hate crime victim (sexual-orientation based or otherwise) and therefore might be just as cluelessly privileged as she is. Some judges, like Boston Municipal Court Judge Thomas C. Horgan, actually reduce the sentences of hate crime perpetrators (how's that for progressive social justice?!). Is Dimond even aware of this gay-bashing case or any other gay-based hate crime other than the Matthew Shepard murder? Does she even give a shit? Also, Dimond fails to realize that judges are often appointed not elected, so the public can't just oust someone from the bench because of lenient sentences given to hate criminals. "Demands" would fall on deaf ears. Having a more diverse judiciary would help insure that more hate crime victims get the justice they deserve, a justice that in the long-run benefits all. I'm just thankful Dimond doesn't go on to argue that a white person charged with a race-based hate crime assault should be judged by a jury of his peers--other white racists.

Here's an idea for Diane Dimond to chew on: how about making racism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, etc., socially unacceptable by having comprehensive state and federal laws that add extra penalties for hate crimes. There's nothing that says "socially unacceptable" better than attaching a nice, harsh punishment to a hate crime, and to providing local law enforcement with the means to investigate hate crimes. That is, of course, the rationale for having hate crime statutes, not an argument against them. We could even go a step further in our efforts to reduce hatred and have states enact so-called hate crime registry boards. Like a convicted pedophile, the convicted hate criminal would have to register with the state board and notify them of his/her housing location which would be passed along to those in the neighborhood. As a society we've decided that people have a right to know if a convicted sex offender moves into their neighborhood (I received a letter last week, in fact, from my local police department notifying my household of a sex offender who moved into my neighborhood). Don't people also have the right to know if a hate crime convict moves into their neighborhood? Or would that upset the status quo too much? Would people lose too much of their societal privilege?

Arianna Huffington you pay Diane Dimond. You hired her and you sign her checks. As Editor-in-Chief of HuffPo you also signed off on her neo-con words to appear on your site. For this, you also bear responsibility for her words. If, after reading this diary, you conclude you don't owe progressives who tirelessly fight historical oppression an apology for publishing Dimond's right wing article on your website, then as I sit and wonder if you will send Diane Dimond off on assignment to cover the next Council of Conservative Citizens convention, at least edit your wiki page to reflect that The Huffington Post is no longer liberal, because we all know that Dimond's opinions mirror those found at WorldNetDaily.

PS Diane, it's 2009, and the proper word is "gay" not "homosexual" (unless you're posting your screeds on internet hate sites, then you can use the antiquated "H" word, though you may find your homophobia so well received at those hate sites that you might choose to use more colorful words to describe GLBT folks).

This blog was originally posted at DailyKos.

Tancredo Speechwriter, Marcus Epstein, Found Guilty of a Hate Crime (with an Update)

And this biracial (yes, Jewish and Korean) pixie schmuck, Marcus Epstein, who consorts with European neo-Nazis, is going to the University of Virginia Law School in the fall? What a self-hating nincompoop. He must have some heavy duty sponsorship for his admission to that school. Do the school authorities know what he really is and what he’s done? Better walk a wide berth from this guy if they allow him to come. Or better yet, get the Latino and black law students at UV organized to be on the look out for this creep and his organization, Youth for Western Civilization. What? From the Washington Independent is the U.S. Attorney’s factual proffer:

On July 7, 2007, at approximately 7:15 p.m. at Jefferson and M Street, Northwest, in Washington, D.C., defendant was walking down the street making offensive remarks when he encountered the complainant, Ms. [REDACTED], who is African-American. The defendant uttered, “Nigger,” as he delivered a karate chop to Ms. [REDACTED]’s head.

A karate chop? To a black woman who just walked by minding her business? According to DC Indymedia, here is what happened next.

[Epstein] was briefly detained by the woman’s husband, but was able to escape, only to be arrested minutes later by a Secret Service officer who witnessed the attack. According to the officer’s statement, a friend of Epstein’s informed him that he had been drinking. Well, in vino veritas.

A restraining order to stay away from the couple has been imposed on Epstein. He currently faces a maximum punishment of 180 days in jail and $1000 fine and also had to continue mental health treatment, complete an alcohol treatment program, write a letter of apology to the victim and donate $1000 to the United Negro College Fund prior to sentencing.

People have been onto Epstein for years. The New York Times, for example, came across a collection of his spew.

[..C]onservative writer and activist Marcus Epstein has worked with the mainstream of the immigration restrictionist movement. He wrote speeches for former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) during his presidential bid, and he’s still working as the executive director of Tancredo’s Team America PAC, alongside Bay Buchanan. Epstein has been targeted for years by civil rights groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the One People’s Project…

Epstein pled guilty, but later took it back. Instead, he admitted that “the government could prove me guilty.” Again, what? His sentencing is scheduled for July 8. Meanwhile, his employer, the former Colorado representative, as well as both Pat and Bay Buchanan, has assumed greater visibility in attacking–you guessed it–Judge Sonia Sotomayor for being a racist.
Well, it certainly takes one to know one.

UPDATE: Talking Points Memo reported late yesterday afternoon that according to Jason Wu Trujillo, UVA’s Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, Marcus Epstein will not be attending the University of Virginia, ever. Brian Beutler suggested that Epstein may have deliberately withheld the incident from college authorities, who insist that prospective students disclose any wrongdoing:

Have you ever been convicted of any offense, excluding minor traffic violations which did not involve injury to others?

Are there any charges pending or expected to be brought against you?

….If, after you submit this application, you are charged with a criminal offense or disciplinary charges are brought against you, notify the Office of Admissions in writing immediately.

If Epstein thought he could slide with silence in the age of the Web and e-mail, or by withdrawing and finessing his guilty plea, his gambling just crashed and burned. These people don’t want drunken, anti-social troublemakers, especially one with demonstrated neo-Nazi and racist tendencies, allowed onto their campuses. Even Pat Buchanan had to toe the line in college. And I bet any college official worth his water with the surnames of Wu and Trujillo would especially be on the lookout for that kind of thing.

*************

Cross-posted at: http://thisblksistaspage.wordpress.com/ and DailyKos

Hate Crime Incidents: From Election Day to Inauguration Day

We've never before known hate crimes to be lubricated by our nation's presidential choice. Being the first elected African-American identified president, however, Barack Obama's success aroused the hateful passions of more than a few Americans. His run for the White House sparked hate incidents which we described in one of our November, 2008, blogs. In addition, his election provoked some to commit criminal acts of hate; and, his inauguration provoked others. Going beyond the headlines, we examine here in detail those hate crime incidents that have come to our attention that were fueled by Obama's election victory and by his assuming the office of the president. After reading this, you’ll learn that there was no randomness to these crimes; rather, similar forces were operating in places with similar histories regardless of where and when they occurred.

In the 78 days from November 4, 2008 through January 20, 2009, we've tallied 14 hate crime incidents that were significantly provoked by the election or inauguration of President Obama. On average, that's about one hate crime every six days, although the crimes did not occur at regular intervals. Ten of the 14 crimes occurred within 48 hours of GOP presidential candidate John McCain conceding defeat. Another Obama-related hate crime occurred on November 14, 2008, and the remaining three occurred four days before, two days before, and on inauguration day. For all we know, there may have been more Obama-related hate crimes, but they did not come to our attention. In these 14 incidents, there were 15 persons arrested; 12 of those arrested were white males, one was a white female, one was an African-American male (said to have posed as a white male on the Internet), and one was a Latino male who worked in concert with three white males. In five of the 14 incidents the perpetrators are unknown with this exception. On election night on the North Carolina State University campus in Raleigh, four N.C. State students spray-painted violent, racist messages about Barack Obama, including two assassination remarks that read, "Let's shoot that N----r in the head" and, "Hang Obama by a noose." Instead of having the students arrested as they should have—calling for a head of state's head is an act of domestic terrorism—the mostly white school's administration instead protected the students. By refusing to take any legal action against them, the school protected the identity of the students, and it refused to discipline them or to expel them from school (although the NAACP demanded expulsion). N.C. State's administration thus sent a chilling message to its current and future black students. Bizarrely, the four cowardly students issued a written, anonymous apology, which of course is meaningless since no one but the N.C. State administration knows who they are. In other words, they said in essence: you don't know who we are, we aren't going to tell you who we are, we're not withdrawing from N.C. State, but now that we've been caught we want to say we are sorry we said we wanted Barack Obama murdered, now shut up and let our college educations be unmarred by our threats of domestic terrorism so that we can use our college privilege to eventually gain well-paying jobs. N.C. State administrators are "studying" the issue of on-campus hate speech, and we can expect their white-washed report out in March.

Turning to the election-to-inauguration hate crime incidents where something is known about those arrested and what they are accused of doing, we've found that in addition to 93% being male, 87% being white, and 80% being white males, the vast majority (93%) were young. The average age of the 15 arrestees is 22.2 years; their ages ranged from 18-42 at the time of their arrests, with five being in their late teens (18-19 years), and nine being in their early twenties (21-24 years). Additionally, only four of the 14 hate crime incidents occurred in former slave states (two in Mississippi and one each in Georgia and North Carolina). The other Obama-related hate crime incidents occurred in New York (where there were four), New Jersey (where there were two), Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, California, and Utah. In other words, those arrested don't fit the stereotype of old, white Southerners clinging to hopes of a resurrected Confederacy. But, of course, American racism was never regional as James W. Loewen has taught us.

Of those arrested little is known about any possible prior criminal history; that is, in only two hate crime incidents where arrests were made was something reported by the media about past criminal activity. In the case of Steven Joseph Christopher, 42—a white man who was arrested in Brookhaven, Mississippi after allegedly planning to travel to Washington, DC, to assassinate President Obama during the inauguration ceremony on January 20th—we know that while living in his native Wisconsin, Christopher was charged with knowingly violating a domestic abuse restraining order in February, 2008 out of Walworth County, Wisconsin—a county whose population is 94.5% white, and one of only 13 counties of Wisconsin's 78 counties to give John McCain the nod over Barack Obama. Forty-eight percent of Walworth County voters picked Obama in a state where he garnered 56% of the vote. According to the laudable research of James W. Loewen, Walworth County, Wisconsin is no stranger to racism; it has one probable and four possible sundown towns—entire communities that have a history of banishing blacks from living there or even being present after dark (hence the term sundown town). It's places like Walworth County—historically racist, currently and historically disproportionately white, and largely Republican—where you would expect hateful seeds to germinate into a plot to assassinate Barack Obama.

In the other hate crime case where something is known about the criminal records of those arrested, in Hemet, California, Justin Tyme Hayes, 21, Crystal Lee McCann, 22, Derek Shane O'Brien, 22, and Darrin Peter Thibault, 24—who were all arrested for allegedly being involved in the brutal race-based beating of a 19-year-old Latino man causing him permanent and severe brain damage ten days after the presidential election—are said to be members of a white supremacist hate group, the “COORS Skins”. In addition, Hayes has been charged with drug dealing. What makes the Hemet hate crime connected to the election is the fact that the COORS Skins had a website which included angry messages railing against the election of Barack Obama. Clearly, Obama's race and his victory on November 4th appeared to further enrage the gang. Thankfully, the website was shut down after the November 14th attack on the Latino victim whose name has not been released to the public. Not so coincidentally, Hemet, California—a city in Riverside County with an African-American population totaling just about 2.6% and with a white population of about 80.5%—also has a history of racism: it is a probable sundown town according to James Loewen's research. Hemet's white population far exceeds that of Riverside County (65.5%), and its black population is about two-and-half times lower than Riverside County (6.24%) which is itself about half the national average. Also not coincidentally, the voters of Riverside County were much less likely to have voted for the winning presidential candidate in 2008 (Barack Obama got 51% of the vote in Riverside) when compared with the entire state of California (61%).

In the 14 hate crime incidents we tallied that were sparked by President Obama's election and inauguration, what exactly is said to have occurred? As we've mentioned, in one case a young Latino man with his future ahead of him now will spend the rest of his life severely brain-damaged and the ward of the state of California; and, as we've said, four college students spray-painted a threat and a directive to kill our president at North Carolina State University on election night with no consequences to them, and one white man, who had also allegedly verbalized threats to assassinate President Obama, was apparently making plans to go to Washington, D.C., to carry out his act at the inauguration. In the other eleven hate crime incidents either someone was assaulted (or otherwise intimidated face-to-face) or a fire was set—with the exception of the case of the only black person arrested. Dyron Hart, 19—a former Nicholls State University student and 6-foot-3-inch, 350-pound Nicholls State football player wannabe—allegedly sent to black students at four schools a message via Facebook stating he planned to kill 3,000 people, including them, the day after the November 4th election. Hart stands accused of sending the electronic threats to students at his old school in Thibodaux, Louisiana, as well as to students at Louisiana State University, the University of Mississippi, and the University of Alabama. Hart, of Poplarville, Mississippi, allegedly was posing as a white man when he is said to have sent the emails. He was arrested by the FBI on November 12, 2008, and if convicted, Hart could receive up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and three years of supervised release. Not unlike Walworth County, Wisconsin, and Riverside County, California, the voters in Pearl County, Mississippi, where Poplarville is located, were significantly less apt to vote for Barack Obama (19%) than the rest of the state (Obama won 43% of the vote in Mississippi).

THE ARSONS

Six of the 14 election-to-inauguration hate crime incidents we've tallied involved purposefully setting a fire. In some instances, the physical damage was minor. For example, in South Ogden, Utah—a place where whites make up 91.5% of the population, where African-Americans constitute only 0.74% of the population, and a place that in 2002 had an active Neo-Nazi hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center—the American flag flying at the home of a black family who had just returned home from volunteering at their local polling station on November 4th was torched. The family was publicly known as being supporters of Barack Obama, and the incident was investigated as a hate crime (no arrest was made).

Similarly, in Hardwick Township, New Jersey, on November 6, 2008, while taking his eight-year-old daughter to school, an African-American man, Gary Grewal, 51, discovered that someone had burned a six-foot tall cross on his yard near his political banner that declared Barack Obama president. The banner was torched also. Although no one was arrested in that hate crime incident, nine days after the fire, townspeople marched in unity against hate crimes. Like some of the other places where there were Obama-related hate crimes, Hardwick Township is almost exclusively white (97%) with a very small, relative African-American population (0.6%). And like nearly all of the other places where these community-destroying crimes took place, fewer people in Warren County, New Jersey (of which Hardwick Township is a part) voted for Obama (42%) than the state where it is located (57% of Garden State voters chose Obama).

Then there was the cross-burning on the lawn of the only black man in Apolacon Township, Pennsylvania, the night after the election. In that small town in Susquehanna County, Archie Johnson, 71—a retired architect—and his partner, Ruth Cohen, 63, who is a Jewish retired school principal, discovered the cross-burning on their property, and one week later police arrested two white men, Stephen James Barrett, 22, and Forrest Michael Ashcraft, 19, both of Friendsville, Pennsylvania. The two were charged with criminal conspiracy to commit ethnic intimidation (a third-degree misdemeanor), ethnic intimidation (a third-degree misdemeanor), and trespassing out of the Montrose District Court. Unlike Harwick Township, New Jersey, there was no anti-hate crime rally in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, where just 0.3 % of its residents are African-American and 98.5% are white, and where on election day, its voters—unlike Pennsylvania—gave the nod to John McCain (55% of voters in Pennsylvania chose Obama, but in Susquehanna County, he received only 44%).

On inauguration day in Jersey City, New Jersey, someone burned the front door of a woman's apartment after first taping Barack Obama newspaper articles on it. Thankfully, the woman who had apparently taken the day off of work to watch Barack Obama's inauguration on television smelled smoke at her front door and discovered it was on fire before major damage or injury occurred. No arrests were made to our knowledge in this case which took place in the only location—of all the Obama-related hate crime communities—where the president fared well in the election. Hudson County, New Jersey, where Jersey City is located, overwhelmingly supported Obama (73%) as compared to the rest of New Jersey (57%).

Two of the election-related hate arsons, however, were devastating. First there was the Springfield, Massachusetts church fire. Just hours after the nation elected its first non-white president, the Macedonia Church of God in Christ, a predominately black church, burned to the ground, and authorities launched an investigation as to whether the Tinkham Road church fire was a hate-related arson set in retaliation for the election of President Barack Obama. They concluded it was, and on January 16, 2009, authorities arrested Benjamin F. Haskell, 22, Michael F. Jacques, 24, and Thomas A. Gleason Jr., 21, all of Springfield, Massachusetts. Haskell is said to have bragged to an uncover police officer that he set fire to the church and was responsible for five other arsons. On January 27, 2009, the three white men were indicted on federal civil rights charges. Each faces up to ten years in prison and three years of supervised release, if convicted as charged.

Then in Cumming, Georgia (Forsyth County) two days before Barack Obama was sworn in as our first African-American identified president, the home of Pam Graf was destroyed by fire as she was in Washington, DC, to attend his inauguration. Arson was the cause, and it was related to Ms. Graf's public support of the president. Referring to president Obama, someone had spray-painted a racial slur and the phrase "your black boy will die" on a fence along her Lanier Drive property. Prior to the suspicious fire, Ms. Graf took down an "Obama for President" yard sign after she received a threatening letter. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was called to aid in the investigation. At the time of the suspicious fire, Cumming, Georgia was overwhelmingly white (89% versus 67% for the state of Georgia), and Forsyth County had significantly fewer votes cast for Barack Obama (20.4%) than Georgia (47%) or nationally (53%). A known sundown community, Forsyth County is well-known for its racism, including incidents as recently as the 1990's.

THE ASSAULTS

As of this date, four of the 15 arrested have pleaded guilty; the remaining have not had their criminal cases adjudicated. The three white men and the one Latino man who pleaded guilty went on a race-based terror-spree on Staten Island immediately following—and because of—the election of Barack Obama. In all, four men were assaulted. Ironically, the victim most seriously injured was white. From our This Date in Hate calendar at our website, here is the account of those assaults:

"In the early morning hours on Staten Island, New York, just hours after the 2008 presidential election outcome was known, four men were attacked in separate race-based hate crime incidents by four Staten Island men—three white and one Latino. First, a black Muslim teenager who emigrated to the United States in 2000 from Liberia, Alie Kamara, 17, was attacked with a pipe and police baton by four men who shouted "Obama" in the Park Hill section of Staten Island. Bloodied by the attack, Mr. Kamara was able to escape from his attackers and he made his way home where he then called for help. The four perpetrators also assaulted a black man in the Port Richmond section of Staten Island by pushing him to the ground, and then accosted a Latino man and demanded who he voted for for president. After those three attacks, a white man, Ronald Forte, 38—who was mistaken to be African-American by his perpetrators—was run over and then left for dead on Blackford Avenue in the Port Richmond section as he was walking home at night from his job as a Shop Rite manager. Mr. Forte, a father of five, who had items stolen from his body allegedly by the perpetrators as he lay clinging to life, was in a coma for days following the attack. He suffered significant brain injury, is no longer able to work, and is being cared for by his mother. Two white Staten Island men, Ralph Nicoletti, 18, and Bryan Garaventa, 18, were arrested for attacking Mr. Kamara, and on November 16, 2008, they pleaded Not Guilty to state charges of assault as a hate crime and weapons possession charges in a Staten Island court. Two other suspects—Michael "Dominican Mike" Contreras, 18, and Brian Carranza, 21—were arrested on January 6, 2009, and were arraigned the following day on federal civil rights charges along with Nicoletti and Garaventa in Brooklyn Federal Court for their roles in the election night hate crime attacks. Police discovered Nicoletti, Garaventa, Contreras and Carranza were involved in the attack on Mr. Kamara, and in the hit-and-run attack/robbery of Mr. Forte, because police found items belonging to Mr. Forte in the possession of Nicoletti and Garaventa during their investigation of the two. All four pleaded guilty to federal civil rights violations (federal hate crimes) for their roles in the post-election attacks which they admitted were prompted by their race-based anger about the election victory of Barack Obama. Garaventa pleaded guilty on January 6, 2009, Carranza pleaded guilty on January 26, 2009, Contreras pleaded guilty (also in January, 2009), and Nicoletti pleaded guilty on February 2, 2009. Nicoletti, who was the ringleader and who was the driver who hit Mr. Forte, could get up to 12 years in federal prison plus fines of up to $250,000; the other three could receive up to 10 years in federal prison each and fines of up to $250,000 each."

Never a sundown town and racially diverse with 15% of its population Latino and another 15% black, Staten Island nonetheless has in common with nearly all of the other sites of Obama-related hate crime incidents election results out of sync with its surroundings. While 62% of New York voters chose Barack Obama for president, less than half (47%) the residents of Staten Island (Richmond County) voted for him. Additionally, two presidential election cycles ago, in 2000, Staten Island had two active white racist hate groups (a neo-Confederate group and a white nationalist group). In fact, 7 of the 11 locations where the hate crime incidents we examined have occurred have had an active hate group or currently do have an active hate group, according to data from the Southern Poverty Law Center. An additional community has a history of overt racism aimed directly at African-Americans (Forsyth County, Georgia) in the form of being a sundown community.

CRIME SITE-SPECIFIC ELECTION RESULTS

Although Barack Obama won the popular vote in 6 of the 9 states where there occurred an Obama-related hate crime, the communities in which those hate crimes happened were very often not hotbeds of Obama support as we've shown throughout this report. In only 2 of 11 hate crime communities did Barack Obama garner significantly more votes than in the state in which those crimes occurred (viz., Hudson County, New Jersey, and Wake County, North Carolina). When examining the president's election results, by state-versus-community percentage differences, we discovered that the hate crime communities were very often places significantly opposed to Barack Obama. As listed below, 7 of the 11 communities were places where Obama had relatively weak support. For example, in Richmond County, New York (Staten Island), Barack Obama had 15 percentage points fewer votes than in the state of New York as a whole. Additionally, in only 3 of the 11 communities where an Obama-related hate crime occurred did he have more of the vote than his opponent, John McCain (highlighted in blue).

Forsyth County, GA: -27

Pearl River County, MS: -24

Richmond County, NY: -15

Warren County, NJ: -15

Susquehanna County, PA: -11

Riverside County, CA: -10

Lincoln County, MS: - 9

Hampden County, MA: 0

Weber County, UT: + 1

Wake County, NC: + 7

Hudson County, NJ: +16

In summary, we've found 14 Obama-related hate crime incidents most all of which occurred in clusters around the time of Barack Obama's election victory (10) and around the time of his inauguration (3). In most of these incidents (93%) the known or alleged perpetrators were men, white (87%), or both (80%); and, the vast majority (93%) were young with 14 of the 15 persons arrested being between the ages of 18 and 24 years. These 14 hate crime incidents occurred in ten states, but the places where the crimes occurred and those arrested for them do not fit stereotypes of old, white Southerners clinging to hopes of a resurrected Confederacy. That the majority of those arrested are young tells us that the nation continues to transmit its beliefs of white supremacy. That less than 30% of the hate crime incidents occurred in former slave states, and that 20% of all states had an Obama-related hate crime incident (and these occurred coast to coast) tells us that the transmission of white supremacy from generation to generation is a national problem. The communities where Obama-related hate crimes occurred generally were places of relative weak support for the president. Finally, in general these communities were historically racist places to live; and, they were and are today disproportionately white communities.

Note: This blog is available as a pdf at our website (see our Trend Reports and The Politics of Hate).

Our 2008 Maintaining Hated Award "Winners"

This year will be the first year that we at trendsinhate.com shine the spotlight on specific individuals and groups of individuals for their work (or lack thereof) in shamefully ignoring criminal justice with respect to hate crimes. These people showed their disregard for the spirit and purpose of hate crime laws in 2008, and in doing so, they degraded not only the positions of public trust that they hold, but also the basic dignity of those who suffered, directly and indirectly, from criminal, hateful behavior that they, as public servants, explicitly reinforced through their actions (or inaction). A selected person or group of people from each of three categories, here are the 2008 Trends In Hate Maintaining Hatred Award "Winners".

Most Hateful Law Enforcement Official in 2008: Demonstrating that African-Americans can turn a blind's eye to race-based criminal activity—even when the perpetrators of that racism target other African-Americans—the winner of the Most Hateful Law Enforcement Official in 2008 goes to Northport, Alabama Police Chief, Robert W. Green. As we detailed in our July 20, 2008, blog "Gaslighting Northport, Alabama" Chief Green showed his audacity by denying that hate crime charges could be filed by his department. He did so by lying to the public asserting that only the federal government could pursue hate crime charges against the two unnamed teenaged individuals arrested for having allegedly tagged a largely African-American and Latino mobile home park with racist graffiti (including the letters "KKK") and shooting a gun repeatedly into the SUV belonging to a black resident of that mobile home park. While it's true that interfering with someone's housing rights based on race is against the federal civil rights statute, Alabama has a hate crime law too, and that law should have been used to charge the teenagers with a hate crime. For their part, the FBI did nothing either; no civil rights charges were filed against the teens. Also, the mayor of Northport has voiced no opposition—let alone moral outrage—to his police chief's Uncle Tom decision. We'll go out on a limb here and speculate that the two arrested teenagers are white, that their parents have some position of standing in Northport, and that, at most, the teens will receive a slap on the wrist for having placed a community in fear. Of course, the public will never know, because since the two arrested were charged as juveniles and not as adults, their court proceedings will not be open to the public. And so, with Chief Robert Green's pathetic decision to not act on the obvious, and with Chief Robert Green's public abdication of his responsibility to the public, Northport, Alabama holds on to the South's racist past...albeit with a twist of irony.

Most Hateful Prosecutor in 2008: This award goes to not one District Attorney but to the entire Dallas County District Attorney’s Office for their refusal to prosecute an obvious hate crime as one. In the early morning hours of July 18, 2008, a white bisexual man, Jimmy Lee Dean, 42, was severely beaten and robbed in the Oak Lawn section of Dallas while walking home from a gay bar in what police tallied as a sexual orientation-based hate crime. An African-American eyewitness, Michael Robinson, 48, who lives in the area of the assault and who was with Mr. Dean at the time of the attack, said two white men shouted anti-gay slurs prior to and during the brutal attack that allegedly involved Mr. Dean’s head being stomped on and him being pistol-whipped near the corner of Throckmorton Street and Dickerson Avenue. The two alleged perpetrators are also said to have stolen a set of keys and a lighter from their victim. The Cincinnati, Ohio native and 20-year resident of Dallas was admitted to the Parkland Hospital in Dallas with life-threatening injuries. He suffered a broken jaw, broken vertebrae, broken facial bones, and significant facial swelling. Witnesses at the scene said Mr. Dean’s nose was attached only by a piece of skin. That is the kind of "overkill", or gratuitous violence, not uncommon in hate crime attacks. Mr. Dean's injuries were so severe that police were unable to interview him for days after the attack. Thankfully, he recovered.

Thanks to smart-acting eyewitnesses, including Mr. Robinson and former security officer and Police Explorer Norman Draper, 26—who, acting as the designated driver for some of his friends, spotted Mr. Dean when driving past the scene of the crime—911 was called quickly; and, the 9mm Glock handgun and the knife used in the crime were recovered. Arrested and charged with first-degree aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon were Bobby Jack Singleton, 29, of Garland, Texas, and Jonathan Russell Gunter, 31, also of Garland. Despite the police's designation that the attack on Mr. Dean constituted a hate crime, the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office refused to press hate crime charges, stating that Singleton and Gunter would face the maximum sentence (up to a 99-year prison term each) if convicted as charged, thus arguing that hate crime charges are unnecessary.

Although it might think it is, the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office is not making decisions in a cultural vacuum. Far from it. Dallas County, Texas—as we showed in our "Hot Spots of Hate" report—is a city with numerous, well-documented hate crimes, including those against gay people. For example, from 1995-2006, Dallas County, Texas had more reported hate crimes—and more reported sexual orientation-based hate crimes—than the counties where Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and nearby Fort Worth are located. In short, Dallas loves to hate its gays. On August 7, 2008, Dallas Voice reporter John Wright wrote: "The Dallas Police Department has classified the [Jimmy Lee Dean] case as an anti-gay hate crime for statistical reporting purposes, but [Kevin] Brooks [felony trial bureau chief for the Dallas Texas District Attorney's Office] said prosecutors have nothing to gain by filing hate crimes enhancements." We think Mr. Wright hit the nail on the head: prosecutors have nothing to gain. In a place like Dallas, Texas, prosecuting a gay-based hate crime could spell disaster for a prosecutor's political aspirations. The decision by the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office in the attack on Jimmy Lee Dean seems less about seeking a lengthy prison sentence for those accused than about avoiding being seen as tolerant of a marginalized minority group. Their decision seems to be about pandering to the larger, conservative—and homophobic—community. Instead of applying the Texas hate crime statute in the Jimmy Lee Dean case, the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office did the lawyerly thing of deflecting away from that fact by talking up how much time they hope the defendants get if convicted.

We disagree too with the stance of a Texas gay-rights group, Equality Texas, which agrees with the D.A.'s decision to not prosecute the Jimmy Lee Dean case as a hate crime. Equality Texas seems to have swallowed the talking points dished out by the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office hook, line and sinker. On August 7, 2008, the Dallas Voice quoted Randall Terrell, the legislative director of Equality Texas as stating: “We certainly can’t disagree with the prosecution that there’s no reason to charge it as a hate crime, because you don’t get any more mileage out of it. The last thing you want to do is endanger a prosecution on something like this.” No reason to charge it as a hate crime? What about the testimony of Mr. Robinson who told police of the anti-gay slurs hurled at the victim? That is reason enough to add a hate crime enhancer to the charge of each defendant. Endanger a prosecution? Here’s the reality: prosecutors run the risk of having a convicted criminal get less punishment if they cannot prove the hate component in a hate crime case, but nonetheless secure a conviction. In the case of Mr. Dean the "hate" evidence seems overwhelming; no witness has come forward to refute what Mr. Robinson told police. Thus, the risk of losing the hate crime component seems to be a small one. In the case of Mr. Dean, less punishment for the two men arrested could be up to 99 years in prison each, if they are convicted of aggravated robbery—that is, if the D.A.’s office “loses” and the defendants are not convicted of a hate crime. That is not a bad consolation prize for the D.A.’s office. Or for public safety.

Other critical points missed by Equality Texas are these. First, by not prosecuting hate crimes the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office is wrongly communicating to the public that hate crime laws are unimportant, and that hate crimes are not more community-damaging than non-hate crimes. In fact, by not pursuing the Jimmy Lee Dean case as a hate crime, another message is given: the eyewitness testimony of a black gay man (Mr. Robinson) in a hate crime case is suspect. That is a racist and homophobic message we hope Equality Texas doesn’t mean to send. Either way, it looks to us as though the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office has played Equality Texas like a fiddle by getting the gay-rights group to parrot their anti-hate crime talking points. Finally, by not prosecuting hate crimes the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office is clearly communicating to the public that those who prey on vulnerable groups of citizens will remain shielded from a law meant to protect the vulnerable. Perhaps that is one reason sexual-orientation and other types of hate crimes are so common in Dallas, Texas.

Through their soft-on-hate-crime stance, who knows how many Dallas-based homophobes the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office has emboldened. They set a low standard for all prosecutors in the Lone Star state by raising the bar high for what constitutes a hate crime in Dallas County, Texas. Jimmy Lee Dean, as quoted by the Dallas Voice, remarked on the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office decision to not add hate crime enhancers to the charges against the two men arrested for allegedly robbing him and nearly beating him to death: “It kind of bugs me.” Mr. Dean, it bugs us too.

Most Hateful Judge in 2008: The first jurist to be named our Most Hateful Judge goes to Suzanne N. Kingsbury. The El Dorado County California judge presided over the Silva hate crime case in 2008. On July 14, in 2007 in Lake Tahoe, California, Joseph Silva, and his wife, Georgia Silva, 49, then of South Lake Tahoe, are alleged to have beaten an Indian American man, Vishal Wadhwa, 38, and to have hurled racial slurs at him, and at his fiancée and her cousin. The Silvas stood accused of knocking Mr. Wadhwa to the ground and while Georgia is said to have sat on the victim, her husband, Joseph, allegedly kicked Mr. Wadhwa in the face repeatedly fracturing several bones in his face at a beach in Lake Tahoe. Out of the El Dorado County Superior Court in Placerville, California, Joseph was charged with felony assault with a hate crime enhancement and Georgia was charged with misdemeanor assault with a hate crime enhancement. The married couple are said to have called the three Indian American victims “terrorists”, “relatives of Osama bin Laden”, and other ethnicity-based slurs at the time of the alleged assault, including “Indian sluts and whores,” and “Indian garbage”. But, the San Francisco banker and his family would not find the justice they had hoped for, thanks to Judge Suzanne N. Kingsbury. On June 26, 2008, the El Dorado County Superior Court judge dropped the hate crime enhancement charges against the Silvas ruling that the evidence did not fit the legal definition of a hate crime. This is, of course, a bizarre interpretation of California's hate crime law, particularly since the defendants are said to have targeted their victims because of their ethnicity. To support the white defendants even further, judge Kingsbury—presiding in a politically conservative county with a white population of 87.5% according to 2007 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau—also dropped the felony assault charge against Joseph Silva.

Rightfully so, many were outraged by judge Kingsbury's outrageous rulings. On August 6, 2008, the Asian Law Caucus called Judge Kingsbury’s rulings travesties of justice, and we believe that the South Asian Bar Association’s Civil Rights Committee chair, Harmeet K. Dhillon, asked an appropriate question about the case: “If this is not a hate crime, then what is a hate crime? If you shout racial epithets and if you break someone’s face based on their ethnicity, it is a hate crime.” Disturbingly, from June, 2004 through June, 2006, judge Kingsbury had served on the Judicial Council of California, which, according to their website, is responsible for ensuring the "consistent, independent, impartial, and accessible administration of justice". Judge Kingsbury bent over backwards for the convicted couple one final time: on September 24, 2008, she sentenced Georgia Silva to one year in jail and Joseph Silva to six months in jail and three years probation; however, Judge Kingsbury ordered that the two will not have to serve their jail sentences at the same time so that one of them will be able to care for their son. The Silvas—who now live in Solano County—have never apologized to Mr. Wadhwa. Given that Joseph Silva no longer resides in El Dorado County, we're guessing his probation out of Judge Kingsbury's court will lack the oversight it deserves.

For the title of Most Hateful Judge in 2008, Suzanne N. Kingsbury barely beat out our runner-up, Orange County California District Judge Thomas Goethals, who on October 28, 2008, dismissed the hate crime (and other felony) charges against three white men who beat an undocumented Latino janitor on his way to work. All three men were drunk from a night of partying on September 9, 2007, first at a Los Angeles Angels baseball game (the Angels lost to the Cleveland Indians 6-2) and then later at Larry Flynt's Hustler Club in Westminster, California. Justin Louis Mullins 23, of Garden Grove, Cheyne Danica Wilson, 25, of Hesperia, and James Joseph Kelly, 26, of California City were arrested and each were charged with one felony count of aggravated assault; Mullins' and Kelly's charges were attached with a sentencing hate crime enhancement. Cheyne Wilson, an officer in the U.S. Army Reserves and a former member of the U.S. Army who served in the Iraq War, was charged with felony aggravated assault and also with one misdemeanor count of carrying a loaded firearm in public. Mullins and Kelly began shouting racial slurs at their victim, Mr. Felipe Alvarado, when their vehicle pulled alongside his at a stoplight on September 9, 2007. The Latino man ignored the men who followed their victim to his place of employment in Garden Grove, and while continuing to shout racial slurs at him, they pulled him out of his car and beat and kicked him. Wilson came along in a second car and joined in. Over a year later on October 28, 2008, Judge Goethals, over the verbal and written protestations of the Orange County California District Attorney's Office, reduced all of the felony charges against the three men to misdemeanors. The three white men then pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charges. Wilson, who continues to train military personnel regularly, also pleaded guilty to the firearms charge.

Probably in part due to protests about the actions of judge Goethals from many in the Latino community and from the D.A.'s office, on December 19, 2008, the judge sentenced Mullins, 24, to four years and four months in prison for violating probation on two prior felony domestic violence and drunken driving charges by incurring charges in the Alvarado assault case. Mullins was also sentenced to one year in county jail for the attack against Mr. Alvarado who, because of the crime against him, has since moved from California and who continues to be fearful to be outside after dark. Kelly, 27, also a former member of the U.S. Army and someone who served in the Iraq War, was sentenced to nine months in county jail and three years of probation for the crime. Wilson, 26, was sentenced to three months in county jail and three years of probation. On the date of sentencing judge Goethals justified his earlier rulings in the case. The judge also ordered the three criminals to pay about $25,000 in restitution to Mr. Alvarado for medical expenses, which begs this question: if the crimes committed by Mullins, Kelly, and Wilson constituted only misdemeanor assault, how could the victim's medical bills be so high (the D.A.'s office has maintained that felony assault occurred).

The Orange County Register reported on December 19, 2008, that judge Goethals was "shocked" by the crime against Mr. Alvarado; yet, if judge Goethals truly thought that the behavior of the three white men constituted just misdemeanor criminal behavior, we wonder how "shocked" he really was. After all, as a college student quoted in the Register's article noted, jaywalking is a misdemeanor. Another Register reader asked what rock judge Goethals has been living under to rule that a hate crime against Mr. Alvarado did not occur.