[ASAN] Call for Hate Crime Prosecution for Murder of Autist

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Jaden
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21 Jun 2013, 12:18 pm

Thelibrarian wrote:
Jaden, how do you figure that hate crimes must be premeditated? Imagine a black thug who hates white people. He wakes up one morning with no intentions of hurting anybody. Then, when he is out and about, he sees a white person, goes into a rage, and decides to murder that person while screaming all manner of racial epithets at them. This would be a "hate" crime that is by definition not premeditated. Since these kinds of crimes are well documented, I'm curious as to why you think they don't exist.


In that example, it would not and could not be classified as a hate crime because the black thug (in your example) killed the white racist because of the racial slurs, not because he was white or he believed something specific.

All hate crimes are premeditated because the crime is always specific to a certain group, and it's always planned out because of attributes of that certain group. A person can hate white people all they want, but unless they planned the murder it cannot be classified as a hate crime because it wouldn't have been because of hate which requires a target. A proper example of a hate crime would be: A man goes out and kills a number of people (not necessarily in the same night) because they believe in God, or because they're all white, or because they all have AS, because he hates that specific attribute in other people. Hate is always planned, it doesn't just pop up out of nowhere.

Furthermore, if you want evidence to verdandi's posts, ask verdandi about it, the only thing I was doing was clarifying what was said because it seemed that you didn't quite get what verdandi was trying to say.


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Last edited by Jaden on 21 Jun 2013, 1:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thelibrarian
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21 Jun 2013, 12:21 pm

Jaden wrote:
[quote="Thelibrarian] In that example, it would not and could not be classified as a hate crime because the black thug (in your example) killed the white racist because of the racial slurs, not because he was white or he believed something specific.


What I described was a black thug calling a white person he had never met racist names as he murdered that person as an example of a "hate" crime that is not premeditated. Or am I misunderstanding you, and you think that all whites killed by blacks are racist and deserve to die?



Jaden
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21 Jun 2013, 1:29 pm

Thelibrarian wrote:
Jaden wrote:
[quote="Thelibrarian] In that example, it would not and could not be classified as a hate crime because the black thug (in your example) killed the white racist because of the racial slurs, not because he was white or he believed something specific.


What I described was a black thug calling a white person he had never met racist names as he murdered that person as an example of a "hate" crime that is not premeditated. Or am I misunderstanding you, and you think that all whites killed by blacks are racist and deserve to die?


Appologies, I misunderstood the perameters of your example, I thought you meant that the white person was screaming racial slurs at the black thug.

In any case, even with that being the case, the hatred would still be premeditated because as I stated before, hatred doesn't just pop up out of nowhere and the black thug, having hatred for the white man in your example, would have had a predisposition to violence against them because of their skin color.

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Or am I misunderstanding you, and you think that all whites killed by blacks are racist and deserve to die?


Absolutely not! Now you're just putting words in my mouth, you will find that I have absolutely no tolerance for people who do that. No-one said anything of the sort, so why don't you just keep that little remark to yourself instead of making ridiculous assumptions about people you don't know.
If you wish to have an intelligent conversation, I'm all ears, but if this is only going to turn into war that is perpetrated by unwarrented assumptions, then this conversation is over.
As you are so fond of saying in this thread: Deal in the facts only.


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Thelibrarian
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21 Jun 2013, 2:09 pm

"In any case, even with that being the case, the hatred would still be premeditated because as I stated before, hatred doesn't just pop up out of nowhere and the black thug, having hatred for the white man in your example, would have had a predisposition to violence against them because of their skin color."

I will agree with your "predisposition" characterization, which is part of what the legal types like to call motive.

Premeditation is something different. Premeditation is where a crime is planned out ahead of time, with a known victim and for clear motives. For example, an organized crime assassination would be a classic example of a premeditated crime. Now, compare this to a crime of passion: A man comes home early from work and finds his wife in bed with another man. The jilted husband goes into a rage and kills his wife and her lover.

The important distinction here is that in the organized crime hit, it is premeditated even if those ordering the hit have no emotional feelings one way or the other about who is being assassinated; as was said in the Godfather movie, you can't let it become personal.

On the other hand, the case of the jilted husband is not premeditated even if he had come to hate his wife, as he had no idea of her adulterous affairs.

Disliking people, places, or things does not necessarily mean one will take action against the things that are disliked. In fact, the pre-PC definition of tolerance was accepting that which we don't like. The idea that it's not enough to accept Big Brother, that we must love Big Brother, is a very new and very ominous trend.

Here is one more to consider: Imagine that white racist who really doesn't like blacks waking up to find a black thug in his house in the middle of the night trying to rape his wife. If the white racist kills the black thug in defense of his wife, it's hardly a "hate" crime, right?

Just to let you know I'm not making this stuff up, I will cite the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premeditated_murder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motive_%28law%29



Ann2011
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21 Jun 2013, 4:09 pm

KenG wrote:
Last week, Alex Spourdalakis, a 14-year Autistic boy living in River Grove, Illinois, was murdered by his mother and godmother. After failing to kill him with sleeping pills, they stabbed him in the chest repeatedly before slitting his wrists. This murder was premeditated and motivated entirely by Alex's disability.

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network condemns unequivocally and without qualification the murder of Alex Spourdalakis and calls on the United States Department of Justice to prosecute his murder under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. The law allows the federal government to prosecute as a hate crime acts of violence when "the crime was committed because of the actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person." Alex's murder clearly fits within the intent and purpose of that law.

I don't think this qualifies as a hate crime. It sounds more like one of desperation. They needed help to cope with Alex's needs but didn't get it. I'm not trying to excuse what they did. It is a crime. But I think there were other factors in play.

Here is a link that outlines the story: ABClocal

This crime doesn't sound like one done out of bigotry towards a certain group. I think the two women were desperate and coped badly, but they didn't do it out of hate. If they had, why would they try to kill themselves?



Jaden
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21 Jun 2013, 4:20 pm

Ann2011 wrote:
KenG wrote:
Last week, Alex Spourdalakis, a 14-year Autistic boy living in River Grove, Illinois, was murdered by his mother and godmother. After failing to kill him with sleeping pills, they stabbed him in the chest repeatedly before slitting his wrists. This murder was premeditated and motivated entirely by Alex's disability.

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network condemns unequivocally and without qualification the murder of Alex Spourdalakis and calls on the United States Department of Justice to prosecute his murder under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. The law allows the federal government to prosecute as a hate crime acts of violence when "the crime was committed because of the actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person." Alex's murder clearly fits within the intent and purpose of that law.

I don't think this qualifies as a hate crime. It sounds more like one of desperation. They needed help to cope with Alex's needs but didn't get it. I'm not trying to excuse what they did. It is a crime. But I think there were other factors in play.

Here is a link that outlines the story: ABClocal

This crime doesn't sound like one done out of bigotry towards a certain group. I think the two women were desperate and coped badly, but they didn't do it out of hate. If they had, why would they try to kill themselves?


As stated earlier in the thread, they were offered services and they denied them, that's hardly an act of desperation. Criminals often try to kill themselves to avoid being stuck in jail, attempted suicide says nothing of character in regards to remorse, moreso instead of cowardice.


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21 Jun 2013, 4:29 pm

Actually their desire to get him out of the hospital seems to be brought about by his ill-treatment there. They may have thought they could do better, but were mistaken.
I think this is an unfortunate case and a crime was committed, but I don't see the hate.

If someone were to go out on the street and randomly shoot disabled people that would be a hate crime. But this is a case of ill equipped people snapping.



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21 Jun 2013, 5:24 pm

Thelibrarian wrote:
"In any case, even with that being the case, the hatred would still be premeditated because as I stated before, hatred doesn't just pop up out of nowhere and the black thug, having hatred for the white man in your example, would have had a predisposition to violence against them because of their skin color."

I will agree with your "predisposition" characterization, which is part of what the legal types like to call motive.

Premeditation is something different. Premeditation is where a crime is planned out ahead of time, with a known victim and for clear motives. For example, an organized crime assassination would be a classic example of a premeditated crime. Now, compare this to a crime of passion: A man comes home early from work and finds his wife in bed with another man. The jilted husband goes into a rage and kills his wife and her lover.

The important distinction here is that in the organized crime hit, it is premeditated even if those ordering the hit have no emotional feelings one way or the other about who is being assassinated; as was said in the Godfather movie, you can't let it become personal.

On the other hand, the case of the jilted husband is not premeditated even if he had come to hate his wife, as he had no idea of her adulterous affairs.

Disliking people, places, or things does not necessarily mean one will take action against the things that are disliked. In fact, the pre-PC definition of tolerance was accepting that which we don't like. The idea that it's not enough to accept Big Brother, that we must love Big Brother, is a very new and very ominous trend.

Here is one more to consider: Imagine that white racist who really doesn't like blacks waking up to find a black thug in his house in the middle of the night trying to rape his wife. If the white racist kills the black thug in defense of his wife, it's hardly a "hate" crime, right?

Just to let you know I'm not making this stuff up, I will cite the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premeditated_murder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motive_%28law%29


I know exactly what premeditation and motive are, that's not what is at issue here. I do not believe you understand what makes something a hate crime, your statements would indicate that you think a hate crime is simply due to hate of anything pertaining to one particular person and that it would require a specific, singular target, when in reality a hate crime is by definition, the targeting of a person, or people, because of an affiliation, even a percieved one, to a group, usually a minority. Since you seem fond of wikipedia, you won't mind actually reading it for yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_crime

The murder in question was because of the victim's condition, making it a textbook definition of a hate crime. The two women in question, were (according to reports stated already in this thread) offered services and they declined them, after which they murdered the victim and most seem to use the defense of being "overwhelmed" even though they had declined offered services that would have helped them. Therefore it is not hard to conclude that it is indeed a hate crime based purely on the victim's condition and not of "desperation" as so many have already claimed.

In either case, these two will likely end up receiving a lesser punishment for this murder than most, under the basis of desperation because the courts will only see them as victims. It is for this very reason that the hate crime statute was instituted in the first place, so that killers couldn't play the victim and recieve lesser punishments for their crimes by manipulating the system, and people's preconceptions about minorities, not to mention that 50 or so years ago, without the hate crime statute, it probably wouldn't have even gone to trial, simply because the victim was a minority.

A basis on how murder is sentenced located Here, indicates that a murder sentence would likely be at least 10 years prison time.
I am calling it here and now, if these two women aren't charged with a hate crime, I predict that they will probably only get a maximum of 7 years, maybe not even that, and it will be on the basis of their "desperation".
Justice? I think not.


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21 Jun 2013, 5:31 pm

Ann2011 wrote:
Actually their desire to get him out of the hospital seems to be brought about by his ill-treatment there. They may have thought they could do better, but were mistaken.
I think this is an unfortunate case and a crime was committed, but I don't see the hate.

If someone were to go out on the street and randomly shoot disabled people that would be a hate crime. But this is a case of ill equipped people snapping.


So by your definition, a crime cannot possibly be a hate crime unless the targets are random?
I can't think of a less correct statement than that at this moment.

Hate crimes are determined by motive and victim status, not whether or not the perp knew the victim. In this case, the motive was clearly the victim's conditon, a condition which also determined their status. Whether people like it or not, this can be classified as a hate crime, by definition, in a court of law, and a prosecutor might even take that route if they think they can win the jury over.


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21 Jun 2013, 5:37 pm

Jaden wrote:
The murder in question was because of the victim's condition, making it a textbook definition of a hate crime.

I think you've got this wrong. The murder wasn't because of his condition, it was because of a lack of support. There is no indication that they hate or discriminated against Alex because he was disabled; rather, it was the situation caused by his disability that brought about the crime.

I still disagree with you about the motives for removing him from care.

Quote:
I am calling it here and now, if these two women aren't charged with a hate crime, I predict that they will probably only get a maximum of 7 years, maybe not even that, and it will be on the basis of their "desperation".
Justice? I think not.

I think 7 years would be entirely appropriate.



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21 Jun 2013, 5:38 pm

Jaden wrote:
Hate crimes are determined by motive and victim status, not whether or not the perp knew the victim.

Fair enough. But I don't think you've got motive here.



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21 Jun 2013, 9:00 pm

Ann2011 wrote:
Jaden wrote:
The murder in question was because of the victim's condition, making it a textbook definition of a hate crime.

I think you've got this wrong. The murder wasn't because of his condition, it was because of a lack of support. There is no indication that they hate or discriminated against Alex because he was disabled; rather, it was the situation caused by his disability that brought about the crime.


Quote:
After failing to kill him with sleeping pills, they stabbed him in the chest repeatedly before slitting his wrists. This murder was premeditated and motivated entirely by Alex's disability.

Quote:
His death is not about services, nor is it about the difficulties associated with his disability. Prior to murdering him, Alex’s mother was offered and refused services from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.


If it were about the effects of his condition, the mother would not have refused services from the state. Any sane person would've taken the help and called it a day, if it were really that bad. Honestly I don't know how anyone can stomach sympathising with a killer the way some on this thread have. She committed murder, she should be locked up and the key should be melted down and never made again. There is never a point where murdering someone because of stress is ok, so why defend her whatsoever?

Ann2011 wrote:
Jaden wrote:
Hate crimes are determined by motive and victim status, not whether or not the perp knew the victim.

Fair enough. But I don't think you've got motive here.


We've had motive since day one on this subject, even the crappy defense (that everyone believes no less) has stated the motive as being due to "desperation" because of alex's condition, which STILL makes it a hate crime by definition.

People can skew it into whatever they want, but plain and simple, a murder took place and despite what the defense would have people believe, it was NOT because of "desperation", and even if it were, that is absolutely no excuse for their actions, and they should be convicted to the fullest extent of the law.

Ann2011 wrote:
I think 7 years would be entirely appropriate.

Human life is worth more than that slap on the wrist. The victim was brutally murdered
Quote:
they stabbed him in the chest repeatedly before slitting his wrists

People have gone to prison for a lot longer for a lot less, 7 years, even 20 years, wouldn't be enough time to punish these murderers, especially since they tried twice.


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21 Jun 2013, 9:15 pm

Jaden wrote:
If it were about the effects of his condition, the mother would not have refused services from the state. Any sane person would've taken the help and called it a day, if it were really that bad.

If she is insane, can it be a hate crime?
Quote:
Honestly I don't know how anyone can stomach sympathising with a killer the way some on this thread have.

I have sympathy for everyone involved in this situation. I have never said that the killers shouldn't be punished.

Ann2011 wrote:
Fair enough. But I don't think you've got motive here.
Quote:
We've had motive since day one on this subject, even the crappy defense (that everyone believes no less) has stated the motive as being due to "desperation" because of alex's condition, which STILL makes it a hate crime by definition.

Exactly, the motive is not hatred of the disabled, but an inability to cope with a specific situation.



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21 Jun 2013, 9:24 pm

Ann2011 wrote:
Jaden wrote:
If it were about the effects of his condition, the mother would not have refused services from the state. Any sane person would've taken the help and called it a day, if it were really that bad.

If she is insane, can it be a hate crime? 1
Quote:
Honestly I don't know how anyone can stomach sympathising with a killer the way some on this thread have.

I have sympathy for everyone involved in this situation. I have never said that the killers shouldn't be punished.
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Ann2011 wrote:
Fair enough. But I don't think you've got motive here.
Quote:
We've had motive since day one on this subject, even the crappy defense (that everyone believes no less) has stated the motive as being due to "desperation" because of alex's condition, which STILL makes it a hate crime by definition.

Exactly, the motive is not hatred of the disabled, but an inability to cope with a specific situation. 3


1. Does it matter? It's murder, she's guilty, we all know it, period.

2. Sympathy is one thing, but it sounds like people are looking more for an excuse for their actions than a reason for sympathy.

3. You missed my point completely.

Quote:
People can skew it into whatever they want, but plain and simple, a murder took place and despite what the defense would have people believe, it was NOT because of "desperation", and even if it were, that is absolutely no excuse for their actions, and they should be convicted to the fullest extent of the law.


The sequence of events proves that.


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21 Jun 2013, 9:44 pm

Jaden wrote:
Ann2011 wrote:
Jaden wrote:
If it were about the effects of his condition, the mother would not have refused services from the state. Any sane person would've taken the help and called it a day, if it were really that bad.

If she is insane, can it be a hate crime? 1
Quote:
Honestly I don't know how anyone can stomach sympathising with a killer the way some on this thread have.

I have sympathy for everyone involved in this situation. I have never said that the killers shouldn't be punished.
2
Ann2011 wrote:
Fair enough. But I don't think you've got motive here.
Quote:
We've had motive since day one on this subject, even the crappy defense (that everyone believes no less) has stated the motive as being due to "desperation" because of alex's condition, which STILL makes it a hate crime by definition.

Exactly, the motive is not hatred of the disabled, but an inability to cope with a specific situation. 3


1. Does it matter? It's murder, she's guilty, we all know it, period.
It doesn't matter as to her guilt, but it does as to her punishment

2. Sympathy is one thing, but it sounds like people are looking more for an excuse for their actions than a reason for sympathy.
You brought it up. I don't think excuse is right; but rather explanation. Like I said, she's guilty, but of what?
3. You missed my point completely.

Quote:
People can skew it into whatever they want, but plain and simple, a murder took place and despite what the defense would have people believe, it was NOT because of "desperation", and even if it were, that is absolutely no excuse for their actions, and they should be convicted to the fullest extent of the law.

So where is the evidence for the hate element?
I don't think the circumstances of the murder are enough to prove this. It almost seems more like a domestic crime than a hate crime.


The sequence of events proves that.
Again I disagree



Jaden
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21 Jun 2013, 11:16 pm

Ann2011 wrote:
Jaden wrote:
Ann2011 wrote:
Jaden wrote:
If it were about the effects of his condition, the mother would not have refused services from the state. Any sane person would've taken the help and called it a day, if it were really that bad.

If she is insane, can it be a hate crime? 1
Quote:
Honestly I don't know how anyone can stomach sympathising with a killer the way some on this thread have.

I have sympathy for everyone involved in this situation. I have never said that the killers shouldn't be punished.
2
Ann2011 wrote:
Fair enough. But I don't think you've got motive here.
Quote:
We've had motive since day one on this subject, even the crappy defense (that everyone believes no less) has stated the motive as being due to "desperation" because of alex's condition, which STILL makes it a hate crime by definition.

Exactly, the motive is not hatred of the disabled, but an inability to cope with a specific situation. 3


1. Does it matter? It's murder, she's guilty, we all know it, period.
It doesn't matter as to her guilt, but it does as to her punishment

2. Sympathy is one thing, but it sounds like people are looking more for an excuse for their actions than a reason for sympathy.
You brought it up. I don't think excuse is right; but rather explanation. Like I said, she's guilty, but of what?
3. You missed my point completely.

Quote:
People can skew it into whatever they want, but plain and simple, a murder took place and despite what the defense would have people believe, it was NOT because of "desperation", and even if it were, that is absolutely no excuse for their actions, and they should be convicted to the fullest extent of the law.

So where is the evidence for the hate element?
I don't think the circumstances of the murder are enough to prove this. It almost seems more like a domestic crime than a hate crime.


The sequence of events proves that.
Again I disagree


I've shown the evidence that was stated like 3 times, and like most people you just don't see it. Well, you're entitled to your opinion, I personally will not state my point a fourth time because it's obviously falling on deaf ears.

Good day.


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