Tyler Clementi

[construct]

Can i ask, what would the typical sentence be for the offences alleged, without bias being attached to them?

I am not certain. I haven't researched it. The general rule in New Jersey is that "bias intimidation is a crime one degree higher than the most serious underlying crime." NJSA 2C:16-1 c. There are some exceptions. I don't know what degree the underlying offenses in this case are, but I suspect they are relatively low.

According to the article linked in the first post, "If convicted of the most serious bias charge, Ravi could face five to 10 years in prison." That seems a little cryptic to me, but I believe that seems to be the punishment for the bias intimidation offense alone, in which case the underlying offense would have a lower sentence than that. ("Believe," "seems to be"? Boy! If I can't get out of that one, something's wrong with me.)

(New Jersey's hate crime law is different from those in most other states. Bias intimidation is a separate offense in New Jersey even though it requires an underlying offense. It doesn't merge with the underlying crime as a penalty enhancement, strictly speaking. But the effect is similar.)



I'm sorry I took so long to answer your question. I had this stuff together last night, but I needed to check my sources.

 

[JNewYork]

Hate crime laws do not apply to minorities only. A crime committed based on the color of the victim is a hate crime whether the victim is black, white, green or blue.

People are not green. They are not blue.

Nice way to convolute things unnecessarily.

Hate Crimes are directed almost exclusively at minorities for being members of a particular group.

Are there some cases where the victim is a member of a majority? Well, I'm sure you can find some. But by and large hate crimes are ALL about the hate for minorities. Let's not pretend otherwise.

 

[Kulindahr]

But have the facts of this particular case come out yet?
Wasn't it just a practical joke? They didn't intend that Clementi suicide?

If someone thinks that publicly ridiculing someone and exposing them to worldwide ridicule is "just a practical joke", well, that someone needs to grow up a lot, fast.

If I start a camp fire on the beach, and it starts a brush and grass fire that scorches five acres, it doesn't matter if I meant it as a way to have a little fun, I still pay the cost of putting out the fire and replanting the dunes -- but if I built that fire because I thought it would be fun to see if sparks would start a grass fire, I also pay a fine of several thousand dollars per acre and go to jail.

That's a matter of intent, of what I'm thinking, BTW, and it's in the law. The thinking and intent of a person are all over in the law, and as in the case of the beach fire, they make it an altogether different crime.

Most of us believe that a crime committed based on race or sexual orientation is a worse crime, hence the punishment should be worse.

Yes, for reasons I'll mention below.

Why is a crime based on race or sexual orientation any different than a crime based on someone's appearance? Or any other characteristic of a person.

Crimes are not being perpetuated at all against members of a majority because of their membership in that group.

The majority in a population, while vulnerable to crime in general as all human beings are, is not suffering any crime whatsoever due to their majority status.

Sorry to disappoint you, but that depends a lot of where you live. THere are urban areas, especially, where whites will get assaulted for being white, because they're seen as members of the "oppressor" class.


The key element to a hate crime is that it is a declaration that certain people are not really human. It is a frontal assault on the proposition that all men are created equal, an effort to do harm for no other goal or cause than that the person is a member of a group the perpetrator believes to be less than human.

That makes whatever base crime was done a fundamentally different matter. It is akin to genocide, and in a civilized country, to rebellion or treason.

If you are attacked because someone is angry and happens to pick you randomly to take out the anger on, that is a totally different matter than that where someone has a conviction that gays merely being alive is offensive. One is harm to your body, the other the expression of a threat to your very being.

If you've ever heard ex-cons brag about how they "got that nigger", or "busted that fag", or "sliced that raghead" -- well, if you don't get why hate crime legislation is just, you should hear them. Beating someone up is merely a matter of discussion of skill, but beating up "one of them" brings admiration and honor. To the real criminal types out there, not getting punished for the animosity that drove their crime is the equivalent of getting a medal.

 

[Kulindahr]

BTW, to those who claim that there's hate involved in all crime -- that's foolish. A great deal of crime is driven by desperation, with no hate in it at all.

 

[construct]

People are not green. They are not blue.

Nice way to convolute things unnecessarily.

Fine then. Please amend to read "black, white, brown, red, or yellow."

Hate Crimes are directed almost exclusively at minorities for being members of a particular group.

Are there some cases where the victim is a member of a majority? Well, I'm sure you can find some. But by and large hate crimes are ALL about the hate for minorities. Let's not pretend otherwise.

How about Mitchell v. Wisconsin, 508 U.S. 47 (1993)? This was the case in which the United States Supreme Court found Wisconsin's hate crime law constitutional. The case involved a black-on-white assault.

The point is that hate crime laws are for the protection of white people from violent African-Americans as much as anything else.

 

[construct]

This seems a little peculiar to me. It almost appears, well actually, just does, look like bias is being used to inflict disproportionate punishments on the accused.

Well, the New Jersey bias harassment law is a little peculiar. It's the only one I've seen like it. I was very surprised when I read it last night.

I agree wholeheartedly that a hate based crime should be treated with more severity, but only slightly so, so as not to detract from the actual crime and punishment, because bias is not a crime, its a prejudice. If a crime is excessively punished with bias being attached, it kind of punishes the bigotry, and whilst i think, "serves themselves right for being nasty little so-and-so's", it creates a weird little enigma in my head, that you can be free to hate when you are free, but if you commit a crime with hate in mind, that you will be punished for your hate, moreso than the crime.

Yes, I suppose so it the sentences are consecutive. My guess is that the sentences are almost always concurrent. If they are concurrent, it functions exactly like a penalty enhancement. It would have the same effect as the underlying crime getting bumped to the next grade, for example a Class B misdemeanor being punished as though it were a Class A misdemeanor.

It seems like a backward way of acknowledging to society that hate is wrong, and i wonder if eventually, someone will challenge the constitution in order to ban hate speech etc.

It seems a double standard to me, to punish with severity for hate on the one hand, yet allow people to rightfully spew it. As if hate only has an impact when a criminal act is carried out.

Perhaps you are not taking into account that America has the strongest free speech protections on the planet. There is absolutely no way on God's earth that a hate speech law would not be found to violate the First Amendment.

 

[Kulindahr]

Yes, I suppose so it the sentences are consecutive. My guess is that the sentences are almost always concurrent. If they are concurrent, it functions exactly like a penalty enhancement.

Concurrent and consecutive....

My friend who got arrested for crimes against someone he'd never met, and who isn't all there mentally, apparently took a plea agreement. He thought he was getting fourteen months for several things, and would be out in a year.

The judge decided to change the state's agreement -- the various counts all got turned into one thing, instead of the others being dropped, and they were made consecutive instead of concurrent. So instead of a half dozen charges and a sentence of fourteen months, he got twenty-five charges and a sentence of three hundred fifteen months.

I need to check more on this, but from what I know... is a judge allowed to do that? He pled guilty to what the plea agreement was, not to what the judge changed things to.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

If we didn't take motive into consideration then women that murder their abusive and destructive husbands, perhaps one that was trying to kill them at the time when they murdered him, would go to jail even though they killed him as means to escape being tortured themselves. They would simply go to jail for murder like everyone else even though their reasoning may have been justified.

If this line of thinking leads to justified murder can we change directions ASAP? Killing someone is never justified and I hope that was a typo or poorly-thought rebuttal.

 

[Kulindahr]

I'm speaking purely from legal standpoints. I don't like semantics. What history is that? What regrets and mistakes? Did I commit hateful malicious action against another targeting them for race, or sexual orientation?

You better prove your argument. Or throw out the bad attitude.

I think he's operating on a number of assumptions, all of which have behind them what I would call a crappy upbringing with little discipline or training in self-respect, respect for others, etc. The notion behind his challenge is that we've all been nasty people who have done things that would be "hate crimes".

The closest thing I can see in my life was high school and college pranks. But we had a strict code of ethics: if someone gets hurt, if damage is done, you step up and make amends -- and if you're not willing to do that, you don't play pranks. But we never targeted someone on the basis of color, religion, language, looks, money, or anything else; we tended to target the people whose reactions would be most entertaining. That, of course, didn't mean people who would get the most pissed, but those who would be most flamboyant, most unpredictable (but not violent), most fun for everyone. And on the few occasions when something went wrong, we dipped into our pockets according to our resources and dealt with it.

 

[tonyboy]

Re: Roommate charged with hate crime in NJ suicide

Anybody remember Tyler Clementi?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_rutgers_suicide

Perhaps this will be "one small step" toward national anti-bullying legislation. Now, if only the neocons will just shut the fuck up. Let's start with Virginia Foxx (R. North Carolina) who asked us to believe that Matthew Shepherd's lynching was a hoax.

Yes, my friend..
I do remember Tyler Clementi. Very much so.

After his death I wanted so much to find a way to write to his parents to tell them how sad I felt..

Each time I saw someting on the national news about him I'd weep..

Six months after he died, I was at a convience store.. middle of the afternoon.. was driving home... had a classcal music station on the radio..

Well the started playing Vivaldis Four Seasons.. not sure if you are familiar with that piece... but it starts with a fast and furious violin solo..
I started to cry because I imagined Tyler playing that.. I"m sure he'd played it before..

Yes I remember Tyler Clementi man.. I will never forget him even though I did not know him personally.
I remember Matthew Sheppard too, though I did not know him personally.

I will never forget Tyler.. never ever.
That young man should not have felt the need to jump off the bridge.
I wish I knew how to let his parents know how deeply I felt of hearing of thier sons useless death..

Man, don't blame what you call the 'neocons' whoever the hell they are..
Blame the guy that cammed Tyler... there was no politics involved in that tragedy at all. it was some stupid student that set up a cam to see what his roomie was up to.
No politics involved man, none at all. it was just stupidity on the part of his roomate.. and I hope he serves time in jail for it.

 

[tonyboy]

Point taken, Fetaby, but I'm trying to explain the rationale behind hate legislation. Let's try again.

Which is worse:

1. Killing somebody in self-defense
2. Killing somebody in the commission of a robbery.
3. Killing somebody because of their race, or sexual orientation.

In each case, there are three bodies, equally dead. Most of us agree, however, that #3 is the most heinous crime of the three.

Hate crimes legislation is a way to make the punishment worse.

(Fetaby, I guess I'm just trying to reach Lucky. His point of view, in particular, bewilders me.)

I think I'd agree with Lucky more that I'd agree with you my friend.
I don't think I'd agree that your #3 is the most heinous crime of the three.

First of all you have to prove things in court.. you cannot just go about saying that someone was murdered for something as subjective as 'hate'.
What's next? killing left handed people is a hate crime.. killing someone that calls them self a Wiccan?
A crime is a crime.. no matter whom it is directed at.

Your #1 scenario is a joke.. all states allow the killing of someone in self defense.

The hate crime laws are so subjective.. and there is no end to where that may lead. Theft is theft, murder is murder, arson is arson.. it matters not what the sexuality of the victim is.. if the crime was commited and proven in court, well the person convicted of it should be punished.

You cannot open up special rights for folks that have been harmed..
It's already getting out of hand. Crimes against the elderly... well one day maybe some law will be passed that says the elderly are considerd such when they are 40 years old.

I hate the idea of bullying as much as anyone does.
I detest the guy that caused Tyler Clementi to feel the need to jump from that bridge.
Hell, I weep every time I see his face on the national news.
The guy that caused him to do that should be charged..
But not with a hate crime. That's just so improvable in any decent court.

The guy Ravi is a total jerk.. I hope he does serve time in prison or jail.
He had to leave Rutgers... I doubt he hated gay guys, he was just a stupid college kid.
But he does deserve to spend time in jail or prison.
There is no way a court could tell if he hated gays or not anyway.

Once again, Hate Crime laws are a joke and so damned stupid..
As Lucky7 said... a crime is a crime... no need trying to find hidden motives for it.

 

[construct]

Tony, you seem to be a nice guy, but you have very little understanding of the law.

I'm going to pass your arguments to Construct, because he addresses the points better than I.

I'm just going to say that 1) proving that a murder is a hate crime isn't as hard as you think, and 2) the idea that a "murder is a murder" is not only black-and-white thinking at its worst, but is also an incorrect idea, as far as the law is concerned. In fact, as I have already mentioned, I can think of at least six divisions of homicide right off the bat.

You've done a pretty good job right there. My answer would be very similar to yours, and right now I'm on my way to being kind of bored with saying the same thing over and over. I'm surprised at the number of people who bring up the same tired, old objections over and over apparently without having read the whole thread. Virtually all of tonyboy's objections here are matters already asked and answered. My frustration ought to be kind of obvious from my flurry of brusque and sarcastic replies yesterday afternoon including the pair of comments about green and blue people. Those who don't understand my reference to green and blue people must be the ones who haven't read the thread.

Since I've only said it once and Mr. Bessler has pretty well covered the rest, I'll condescend to answer only the objection about the list of categories meriting protection. The list should be limited to the characteristics that have historically been the basis for invidious discrimination. Race meets that test. Sexual orientation meets that test. Religion meets that test. Handedness doesn't. Now we aren't moving all that fast here, but if you can't keep up, take notes.

 

[JNewYork]

Fine then. Please amend to read "black, white, brown, red, or yellow."



How about Mitchell v. Wisconsin, 508 U.S. 47 (1993)? This was the case in which the United States Supreme Court found Wisconsin's hate crime law constitutional. The case involved a black-on-white assault.

The point is that hate crime laws are for the protection of white people from violent African-Americans as much as anything else.

Agreed. I just think that the black, red, yellow, and brown people have suffered far, FAR, more for being their color than whites have suffered for being theirs.

But I won't doubt there have been hate crimes against whites.

 

[Kulindahr]

I just can't understand tonyboy and lucky7 here. Plenty of explanation has been given that motive, intent, thinking, even feeling are all over the law already. Someone mentioned arson -- well, thinking and intent are built into that concept; it means deliberately setting fir to something, or knowing that your actions are likely to set fire. I was driving at that with my beach fire -> dune fire illustration.

The concept involved in hate crimes is not new, strange, or novel; it is abundant in existing law, and sensibly so. If a guy is walking along a trail kicking rocks, and one tumbles down a slope and hits a baby in the head, killing it, that's an entirely different thing than someone walking along a trail, knowing that there's a family down there with a baby, and kicks rocks anyway, which is an entirely different matter than someone who walks along a trail, discovers there's a baby below, and starts kicking rocks, which is an entirely different matter than someone who learns that there's a place families with babies hang out, and there's a trail up above, and decides that would be a fun place to go walk and kick rocks off....

So also is it one matter to just beat someone up, and a completely different one to discover someone is gay and beat him up for that, and yet a completely different one from feeling like beating someone up and deciding some gay would be a 'good' target, and still a different one from hearing there are gays around and deciding to go beat one up.

These are distinctions already made in the law, and considered by juries. I've sat on three juries, and even in the one that was just a traffic case we spent time looking at thinking and motive -- we even inquired as to whether the accused was familiar with the area (something the D.A. wanted disallowed by the judge said it was a reasonable fact for a jury to want to know). In a case involving a theft of a firearm, it made a big difference knowing whether the perpetrator knew the victim, and what sort of relationship there was, and whether he had any animosity toward the victim -- and whether he had any animosity toward any group of which the victim was a member... a question we asked even before there were hate laws.

 

[Kulindahr]

And hate crimes can even apply to crossburning, or destroying of property (such as graffiti with hateful messages directed at the occupant/owner of that property). Is this so difficult for some to understand? I'm starting to lose my patience.

Or a combination, which occurred before there were hate crime laws, when I was on staff at a large apartment complex: at a complex down the road, a mixed-race couple moved in. Someone broke into their apartment, set up a cross on the living room floor, and set it afire -- after scrawling messages on the walls of the bedroom.

BTW, the messages referenced the Bible. Knowing what they were, I was able to supply the complex manager with some sound responses when a mixed-race couple applied to move into our complex. I like to think I played a small part in preventing another incident of violence...

...and I still get a kick out of the look on one racist's face when I told him that since Adam and Eve had obviously been of a single race, which has subdivided, people who believe the Bible should be actively working to get everyone to marry someone of a different branch of the human race, to try to mix the genes back the way they were.

 

[rearadmiral]

This is not the crime of the century. Tyler Clementi would have been embarrassed. Haven't we all? Deal with it. But no, he CHOSE to cause misery to friends and family by his cowardly act. Was the instigator an asshole? Certainly. Not a criminal, just an asshole.

To quote from a caption to a photo by the photographer John Sturrock at the "Positive [i.e. HIV+] Lives Exhibition" in London in 1993, a quote I noted in my commonplace book:

"We have to look inside ourselves, to our own patterns of need and denial, and having touched our own pain, we might be generous about that of others."

Dismissing someone's suicide as a cowardly choice, and thereby implying that one is superior, is to overlook how unexpectedlly unkind and unpredictable life can be for any of us. Your lack of understanding of Tyler's pain, fear, despair, and sense of being at a loss as to what to do to remedy a terrible, unforeseeable situation (and I read all his posts on JUB afterwards) says quite enough about the quality of your mind, and the generosity (or evidently the lack of it) of your spirit, and I regret that no-one else seems to have challenged this so far.

 

[rearadmiral]

What is extra disappointing about these two, Dharun and Molly, is that they're both minority people, so you would like they had more sense in their heads having possibly gone through discrimination or being made fun of when they were kids.

Although I understand how you feel, some people just don't have even this level of insight.

When I was visiting a friend years ago (nineteen seventy-eight -- the numerals come out as a smiley), her mother, also visiting, made a critical, dismissive, generalizing remark about a particular nationality, and she must have seen my shock, because she went on in her opinionated know-all way to (as she thought) justify it. I didn't want to create a rift with the friend concerned by rowing with her mother, but I wanted to ask this woman if she had learnt nothing at all about the dangers and horrors of national/racial stereotyping from the death of her parents in Auschwitz -- the ultimate destination of what stereotyping leads to. (BTW, the nationality concerned was not German, which would have been understandable even if not excusable.)

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

I was about to comment until I saw that this is another topic where disagreeing means "Your brain isn't capable of blah blah blah."

Somebody text me or call me if this topic grows up a little bit.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Karen, you apparently don't know much

There it is again! Point taken, disagreeing = not knowing. I hear ya loud and clear.

It does sort of confuse me, the hate crimes thing. In general, gender hate crimes, sexuality hate crimes, race hate crimes. How can you simultaneously ask to be treated like everyone else and ask to protected to a higher degree than everyone else?

And I don't understand the term "hate crime," literally. Any act of violence towards another person is an act of hatred, whether it's because of their race or their gender identity or if it's because they stole your boyfriend or scuffed your shoes. What other kind of violence is there BESIDES hate-based? Non-hate based violence?

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Sidenote: Cloacking insults to someone's intelligence with this garbage about "Some people's brains operate this way" is just a more (or less?) clever way of communicating a juvenile notion.