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Title: The Men Accused of Killing Ahmaud Arbery Should Not Face Federal Hate Crime Charges
Source: Reason.com
URL Source: https://reason.com/2021/04/29/the-m ... ce-federal-hate-crime-charges/
Published: Apr 29, 2021
Author: Billy Binion
Post Date: 2021-04-29 19:08:05 by Dakmar
Keywords: None
Views: 73
Comments: 1

Seventy-four days elapsed before the state of Georgia announced it would prosecute Travis McMichael, George McMichael, and William "Roddie" Bryan for murdering Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged through a neighborhood in Brunswick, Georgia. The state took action only after a viral video showed the three men confronting Arbery, who they suspected of burglary.

All three were ultimately indicted last June by a Georgia grand jury on four counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, as well as one count each of false imprisonment and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment. All of which is to say that while the justice system moved too slowly, it did in fact move.

Despite that fact, the Department of Justice announced yesterday that it had filed federal hate crime charges against the men, who now each face one count of interference with rights and one count of attempted kidnapping, while the McMichaels also face "one count each of using, carrying, and brandishing—and in Travis's case, discharging—a firearm during and in relation to" a violent crime.

"Counts One and Two of the indictment allege that the defendants used force and threats of force to intimidate and interfere with Arbery's right to use a public street because of his race," reads the announcement.

Though Bryan wasn't part of the direct confrontation between the McMichaels and Arbery—he filmed it—he is charged with using his truck to block off a route of escape.

The case is nothing short of nauseating, and Arbery's race did in fact play a role. "Bryan said that after the shooting took place before police arrival, while Mr. Arbery was on the ground," Special Agent Richard Dial of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation testified, "that he heard Travis McMichael make the statement: fucking nigger."

But hate crime charges for Arbery's killers do not produce more or better justice. The perpetrators of racially motivated violence do not deserve a worse punishment than people who commit opportunistic violence, or violence inspired by a mutable trait or characteristic. Our laws should punish crimes, not bad thoughts.

What's more, the entire concept of a hate crime has been undermined by increasingly expansive interpretations. "Everyone agrees that it should be a hate crime to shoot a police officer," said state Sen. Cam Ward (R–Alabaster), the chairman of the Alabama Senate Judiciary Committee, in 2019. The Contra Costa County District Attorney's Office last year handed down hate crime charges to Nicole Anderson and David Nelson for painting over a city-sponsored Black Lives Matter mural.

Also problematic with the DOJ pursuing a civil rights prosecution is that Georgia is already in the process of trying all three men. Way back in 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union discouraged this exact type of federal hate crime prosecution when it beseeched the Senate to "further limit[] the federal government's jurisdiction to prosecute when state or local prosecutors are diligently investigating and prosecuting a person for the same crime." The ACLU was worried at the time that expanding federal hate crime law "could result in an unwarranted expansion of federal authority to prosecute defendants—even when a competent state prosecution is available." They weren't wrong.


Poster Comment:

I used to be small "l" libertarian, much like Reason.com. Over the past two years, I felt like Reason was defending a philosophy that was becoming irrelevant in the face of "progressive" onslaught against the very concept of rational thought. It's good to have them back.

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#1. To: Dakmar (#0)

Wow, amen to that. The GOP is horrible enuff to drive any thinking person away, but libertarianism is hardly an alternative.

'Diversity' and the income tax are the two main curses on ameriKa today, and as far as I can tell all 'name' parties are horrible in their regard. The LP clearly exists as an escape hatch from racial reality. Aside from Ron Paul and our 1980s Populist Party presidential candidates David Duke, Bo Gritz and Pat Buchanan, I can't think of any 'name' ones that have called for abolishing the income tax and replacing it with nothing.

Diversity is the jew-liberal religious belief that whites are evil and must hand everything they've got over to nonwhites -- their money, their property, their rights, their freedom, their minds, souls and ultimately their lives. 'Immigration' as we know it is a key aspect, and liberts' gutless stance is that people should enjoy totally free movement between countries. That used to work great when all white countries rigorously maintained sane racial policies, but that was a long time ago.

Arbery's killers should be free and clear until the authorities stop the 60-year race war they've waged and fomented against whites. Restitution is what's needed, not prosecution. Govt at all levels has systematically bred armies of feral criminal nonwhites as their troops all this time and inflamed their low-IQ passions against us.

The hate crime concept is depraved enough, but what about the motive of Messrs McMichael, McMichael and Bryan? Cowardly Reason admits they suspected Arbery of burglary, but quickly drops the subject for a lot of racial hand-wringing.

Ya got me goin' ;)

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NeoconsNailed  posted on  2021-04-30   5:32:07 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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