TX Man Sentenced to Life in Prison for 9th DWI

[Danke]

//

 

[MelissaWV]

Oh, here's the difference again. Hate crime requires actual crime, most likely actual bodily injury (maybe threats are an exception). Hate crime never punishes mens rea on its own, as many would like to believe (although some groups may wish to make it so). DUI does not require actual injury, no more than speeding or running red light does. Again , DUI punishes recklessness, negligence, specifically lacking mens rea. Perhaps a big similarity is, they are both designed to discourage and prevent what is believed to be preventable. Hate crime is based on the belief that without the hate, there may be no crime. Similarly, DUI is based on the belief that when the driver is sober, he's a better and safer driver.

Can Speech be a Hate Crime?

The answer is apparently yes, at least in lefty Boulder, Colorado, where 23-year-old Zachrey Harris has been sentenced to 20 days in jail and two years of probation for using racial slurs against a Nigerian student and a Saudi student at the University of Colorado.

...

For now, an American citizen is going to spend time in jail for "ethnic intimidation" for his ignorant words....

Yesterday I saw a story on New York 1 about how a LGBT (Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender) center in NYC lowered a huge Rainbow (gay) flag from their headquarters. The flag was said to be a show of solidarity and defiance after a rainbow flag was burned and left outside of the center on April 14th.

I must confess that I somehow missed this important news story when it happened. The only reason that I even glimpse at New York 1 is because it’s the default channel when I turn on my Time Warner Cable. The story I heard yesterday made me take a look at the original story.

What immediately amused me was the fact that the NYPD and local politicians are calling this a “hate crime.”

Wait a minute! Hasn’t the Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag is protected under the first amendment? Hasn’t the Left and their cronies at the ACLU consistently defended this act?

So let’s get this straight. Burning the American flag is freedom of speech, but burning the Rainbow flag is a hate crime – give me a freakin break already! Maybe burning the Rainbow flag in front of the LGBT center was stupid, or even distasteful, but a hate crime?

^ Granted, this one involves destruction of property, but he makes a good point about the US flag.

In Connecticut, there are several hate crimes laws that address hate speech on the Internet. Hate speech that threatens, intimidates, or harasses could be punished under these statutes (CGS §§53-37b, 53a-40a, 53a-181b). CGS § 53-37 addresses speech that ridicules a person.

California P.C. 11412 – Threats obstructing exercise of religion.

^ Felony

As Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in a 2003 case involving a First Amendment challenge to the Commonwealth of Virginia's cross-burning statute:



… the burning cross often serves as a message of intimidation, designed to inspire in the victim a fear of bodily harm. Moreover, the history of violence associated with the Klan shows that the possibility of injury or death is not just hypothetical.…when a cross burning is used to intimidate, few if any messages are more powerful. (Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343, 357 [2003])

^ Lets assume the cross belonged to the people doing the burning. It was a crime due to the intimidation, the POTENTIAL for harm.

And a glimpse into the future:

A student who admitted posting racially offensive comments on Twitter about footballer Fabrice Muamba has been jailed for 56 days.

Swansea University student Liam Stacey, 21, from Pontypridd, admitted inciting racial hatred over remarks about the Bolton Wanderers player, who collapsed during a FA Cup tie at Tottenham.

A district judge in Swansea called the comments "vile and abhorrent".

Muamba, 23, who suffered a cardiac arrest, is still in intensive care.

Sentencing Stacey at Swansea Magistrates' Court, District Judge John Charles told him: "In my view, there is no alternative to an immediate prison sentence.

Sorry, but if you think hate crimes are only applicable once property or person has been damaged, you're a bit behind the times.

 

[Tpoints]

^ Granted, this one involves destruction of property, but he makes a good point about the US flag.

^ Felony

^ Lets assume the cross belonged to the people doing the burning. It was a crime due to the intimidation, the POTENTIAL for harm.

And a glimpse into the future:

Sorry, but if you think hate crimes are only applicable once property or person has been damaged, you're a bit behind the times.

oh, I did say threats are a possible exception. But threats are a crime anyway. Also, hate crime isn't what the victim says, or what the police opine, until you point to actual statutes for additional penalty in the trial, they don't count (as they are just added stigma, not actual punishment).

 

[MelissaWV]

oh, I did say threats are a possible exception. But threats are a crime anyway. Also, hate crime isn't what the victim says, or what the police opine, until you point to actual statutes for additional penalty in the trial, they don't count (as they are just added stigma, not actual punishment).

The trouble with "threats" is that it's so open to interpretation it's pointless. Truelies has been arguing all along that being intoxicated is a threat.

However, not everything I posted was a threat at all. I believe the college student in the first story called someone a "monkey," among other things. There's a disheartening story about someone being arrested for praying silently, too, but as he was charged with disturbing the peace I didn't include it. There have been repeated attempts to legislate speech that merely hurts feelings, rather than actually constitutes a credible threat.

Anyhow, not actually interested in derailing this whole thing. I just see them as unnecessary laws.

 

[presence]

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action
according to our will
within limits drawn around us
by the equal rights of others.

I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’
because law is often but the tyrant’s will,
and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

Thomas Jefferson

^^

 

[carclinic]

It's not like this guy had a tenth DWI. Jeez, had it with the big government getting all over our freedom to drive intoxicated.

LOL

 

[Tpoints]

The trouble with "threats" is that it's so open to interpretation it's pointless. ....................

rather than actually constitutes a credible threat.

Anyhow, not actually interested in derailing this whole thing. I just see them as unnecessary laws.

Wait, which one is it? Is there or is there not such as thing as a credible threat?

 

[presence]

Wait, which one is it? Is there or is there not such as thing as a credible threat?

Couldn't we just call a "credible threat" an assault and require the same precedent as any other assault; 1)victim must 2)apprehend 3)immediate 4)personal violence?

 

[Tpoints]

Couldn't we just call a "credible threat" an assault and require the same precedent as any other assault; 1)victim must 2)apprehend 3)immediate 4)personal violence?

yes, we could, or at least if you ask me. Not sure what Melissa's answer is. Then there are people who say "you MUST actually injure a person otherwise everything is OK"