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.
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