(no subject)

[twincityhacker]

Man beaten for over twenty-four hours and left to die in a southern Indiana field. In April

The brilliant defense by the attackers, who filmed themselves beating Aaron Hall, was that they were in a 'gay panic'.

No one picked up on this except the local papers, and even then it took two months to just get to Bloomington, which is a whopping 90 miles away.

Crothersville is about 60 miles from Jasper.

Comments

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

The idiots can say that "Hall came on to me, so I beat him to death!" in court and have that statement a legit defense, because appealing to homophobia is "okay" because there isn't any hate crime laws in Indiana.

And that area is really homophobic.

[commanderteddog.livejournal.com]

In all seriousness, that should have been laughed out of court. It's like trying to justify an honour killing.

I've been trying to find out the status of Hate Crime laws in the states. Yes, it's mostly to defend my own butt while I'm stateside, since it's almost July. Up in here, it's covered in the Criminal Code of Canada, so it's a blanket statement that covers all the provinces and territories. So, it does vary state to state in the US?

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

Hate crime laws to vary from state to state, with everyone except Indiana, Georgia, South Carolina and Wyoming covering race, religion, ad ethnicity.

The federal hate crime law only protects six circumstances where it would be illegal to prevent people for performing actions like voting, or using interstate transportation.

There's a bill that passed the House, and working though the Senate that would drop the part about protecting the six activities and expanding the actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability in addition to the race, religion, and ethnicity.

I'm hoping that the people on the jury agree with you.