Eideard

A white man has been convicted of setting fire to a mostly black church in November 2008 to protest Barack Obama’s election as the nation’s first black president.

The arson fire on November 5, 2008, just hours after election results were announced, destroyed the almost-completed Macedonia Church of God in Christ in Springfield, Massachusetts, about 90 miles west of Boston. Several firefighters were slightly injured battling the flames.

Prosecutors argued that Michael Jacques, 26, and two white friends were motivated by racial resentment when they doused the building with gasoline and torched it. The church’s congregation was about 90 percent African American and authorities said the white men wanted to denounce Obama’s victory.

After a three-week trial, the jury in U.S. District Court in Springfield deliberated for nearly three days before finding Jacques, of Springfield, guilty of conspiracy to violate civil rights, religious property damage because of race and damage to religious property by use of fire…

Jacques faces up to 60 years in prison when he is sentenced on September 15, said assistant attorney Paul Smyth, the lead prosecutor in the case.

Two other men charged in the hate crime, Benjamin Haskell and Thomas Gleason, both 24, already have pleaded guilty to similar charges. Haskell was sentenced in November to nine years in federal prison, and Gleason, who testified for the prosecution in the trial, will be sentenced in October…

The church is being rebuilt and is now expected to open later this year, its pastor, Bishop Bryant Robinson, said last month.

Throw away the key.

Luis Ramirez with his fiancee, Crystal Dillman, before his murder
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Five people, including three police officers, have been indicted on charges related to the beating death of a Latino man in rural Pennsylvania in July 2008…

The indictments come almost six months after a Schuylkill County jury acquitted two teens of aggravated assault and one of murder in the death of Luis Ramirez.

The undocumented Mexican immigrant was beaten into a coma during a street brawl involving the teens and their friends on a residential street in Shenandoah. The incident divided the small, rural mining town along racial lines and became a flash point for racial tensions nationwide.

After the verdict, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell denounced the attack as racially motivated and called on the Justice Department to intervene.

A federal grand jury handed up the indictments last week, and they were unsealed Tuesday. The two young men, Derrick Donchak and Brandon Piekarsky, are accused of a hate crime for beating Ramirez while shouting racial epithets at him, according to the department.
If convicted of hate crime charges, Donchak and Piekarsky face a maximum penalty of life in prison. Donchak also faces a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted of obstruction, and an additional five years on the charge of conspiring to obstruct justice.

Donchak also faces three counts of conspiring to obstruct justice and related offences. He is accused of attempting to orchestrate a coverup with members of the Shenandoah Police Department, the Justice Department said.

Shenandoah Police Chief Matthew Nestor and Lt. William Moyer and Officer Jason Hayes are charged with conspiring to obstruct justice in the Ramirez investigation. Moyer faces additional charges of witness and evidence tampering and making false statements to the FBI.
Nestor, Moyer and Hayes intentionally failed to “memorialize or record” statements made by Piekarsky about the incident, and “wrote false and misleading official reports” that “intentionally omitted information about the true nature of the assault and the investigation,” the indictment said.

A tragic example of bigotry grounded in a community and its officials – not just points on a compass. The first thing I learned in the civil rights movement – decades ago – is that you can be killed just as dead by a bigot in the North as the South. And the cop pulling up outside your home might not be there to help you.

Fortunately, sometimes you can find a good cop to help you deal with the bad cop.

The Senate voted Thursday to extend new federal protections to people who are victims of violent crime because of their sex or sexual orientation, bringing the measure close to reality after years of fierce debate.

The 68-to-29 vote sends the legislation to President Obama, who has said he supports it.

The measure, attached to an essential military-spending bill, broadens the definition of federal hate crimes to include those committed because of a victim’s gender or gender identity, or sexual orientation. It gives victims the same federal safeguards already afforded to people who are victims of violent crimes because of their race, color, religion or national origin.

“Hate crimes instill fear in those who have no connection to the victim other than a shared characteristic such as race or sexual orientation,” Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said afterward. “For nearly 150 years, we have responded as a nation to deter and to punish violent denials of civil rights by enacting federal laws to protect the civil rights of all of our citizens.”

Ten Republicans voted for the hate-crimes measure.

A fitting memorial to Matthew Shepard – beaten and murdered by bigots.

From the early 1930′s, Republicans had a better voting record on civil rights than did the Dems. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 wouldn’t have made it through Congress without the participation of Everett Dirksen. There is no Republican in Congress, today, with that commitment to justice and the American people.

Angie Zapata

A Colorado man was convicted of first-degree murder and a bias-motivated crime and sentenced to life in prison for killing a transgender teen he met on an online social networking site.

It was the first time in the nation that a state hate crime statute resulted in a conviction in a transgender person’s murder.

Seated in the front row of the courtroom, the family of Angie Zapata broke out in tears as the verdicts against Allen Andrade were read Wednesday.

The jury deliberated for just under two hours before returning the verdict shortly after 3 p.m.

“I lost somebody so precious,” said Maria Zapata, the victim’s mother. She glanced at Andrade and continued: “The only thing he can’t take away is the love and the memories that I have of my baby. My beautiful, beautiful baby.”

Andrade spoke just one word. “No,” he said when asked if he wished to address the court.

Judge Marcelo Kopcow then imposed the mandatory sentence for the first-degree murder conviction — life in prison without parole.

So much fear and trembling over sex. How much of any society’s culture is generated by ignorance, fear rooted in hatred of the unknown and different? Bloody Dark Ages of the mind.

Cripes – just leave people alone if you can’t deal with them.