Posted on 11/22/2019 4:50:57 AM PST by karpov
Authorities arrested a 14-year-old white male student at Naperville High School in Naperville, Illinois, and charged him with committing a hate crime.
What the teen did was genuinely bad: He took a picture of a black classmate and posted a "slave for sale" ad on Craigslist. The school suspended him, and it was right to do so.
But now the police are involved, and the teen faces two felony hate crime charges as well as a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge.
...
For the authorities to charge someone with a hate crime, there must be an underling crime. Simply holding or expressing hateful views is not illegal—indeed, it is protected by the First Amendment. Prosecutors can consider hate crime charges only when hate is the motivating factor in the commission of a crime, such as assault or vandalism.
Since disorderly conduct is the only other item here, the hate crime charges presumably stem from that. Disorderly conduct is often a broad category of offense, and such is certainly the case under Illinois law: "A person commits disorderly conduct when he or she knowingly does any act in such unreasonable matter as to alarm or disturb another and to provoke a breach of the peace." The disorderly conduct charge is a misdemeanor, but the hate crime charges are felonies, making this an extremely serious criminal matter for a 14-year-old kid.
I don't know what was going through his head when he posted the Craigslist ad—news article suggest the two boys were former friends—and I do not object at all to the school itself taking punitive action. But should the cops really be arresting 14-year-olds, and subjecting them to life-derailing felony charges, for incidents of nonviolent bullying?
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
Thanks for the good summary.
He's 14. Probably did it for the "lolz" as they say. This isn't a hate crime. It's juvenile harassment of the classmate unless he was in on it too.
Will you STFU!! This case has nothing to do with underage girls and child prostitution.
So the craigslist add assaulted him and vandalized a family home?
The victim of what exactly?
Really? So you’re a lawyer familiar with how civil lawsuits play out?
Tell us more.
Hate Crimes are 100% Unconstitutional.
Hate is a motive, it isn’t a Crime.
Being offended is part of Life, not something that you can Jail a person for. WTH has happened to our Country?
I won't ask why you would know photos of children were in sexual service ads on Craigslist.
This kid wasn't engaged in human trafficking, it was online harassment of a fellow student presumably done as a joke rather than something more malicious. Either way it was STUPID.
And I recall the days when I had a Black friend in the Army that openly called me “honky” in front of the whole troop and I called him the N word right back. No one cared.
Read my subsequent posts before asking me anything.
“Schools exist for one purpose: education. Anything else is out of their purview.”
I don’t disagree.
I suppose they (school admins and other officials) consider the pledges under the purview of education, thus they can rationalize the draconian control they lust after.
You just have a way of nailing things to the wall don't you? ;-)
Well played.
No.
I read the post I responded to.
I don’t care about your other posts, in fact, you can stuff them up your rear end as far as you can get them.
This listing showing the percentage of bias motivation categories for victims of single-bias incidents in 2018 put out by the DOJ. They are as follows:
Race/Ethnicity/Ancestry/Bias 59.6%
Religious 18.7%
Sexual Orientation 16.7%
Gender Identity 2.2%
Disability 2.1%
Gender 0.7%
Of the 6,266 known offenders:
53.6% were White
24.0% were Black or African American
12.9% race unknown
Of the known percentages of race in the US:
White Americans to include Latin - 76.9%
Black Americans to include all black oriented = 12.7%
So if you determine the percentages of hate crimes versus population percentages, the black Americans are overachievers while the white race doesn’t indicate the same habits. You just won’t hear about Jesse or Al screaming about black crime. Bill Cosby did and you see what it got him.
rwood
“What the kid did was socially wrong, but probably protected speech under the 1st amendment, but in no case should it be a felony.”
I agree, BUT I must point out the crucial word that you rightfully included, “socially”.
To just say it was “wrong” is ... wrong. By WHAT standard was it wrong? A “legal” standard? Maybe, but it shouldn’t be.
By a “hate crime” standard? Absolutely NOT! There is no such THING! There are crimes and there are not.
Murder is a crime. Murdering someone because you “hate” them, is still just murder.
Murdering the guy you caught in bed with your wife is still murder. What difference should it make if he were Black? NONE!
The holocaust would be or maybe IS the ultimate hate crime. What was done to the Jewish people (and others) was an abomination.
Was it any “more” so because they were Jews? NO! Would it not have been just as evil if it were Catholics? YES!
Let me just say, that one of the most moving and yes spiritual days of my life was the first time I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.
I was so “moved”, even moved to tears. It wasn’t about “Jews”. It was about evil in the world. Man’s inhumanity to man. It literally broke my heart. In the disgusting photos and videos I saw “people” not Jews. Many were human skeletons, some alive, many dead. I couldn’t tell by looking at them that they were Jewish.
I am NOT disparaging Jews!!!!! I am just pointing out that it shouldn’t be about “groups”. It shouldn’t matter that it was Jews. It’s no more or less evil because of which group it was or that it was a particular “group” at all.
Was it “wrong”, a “hate crime” to post a picture of a Black kid as a “slave for sale”?
paraphrasing the character of Jake Brigance in the amazing movie “A Time to Kill”
Now imagine that the child was “white”.
“The Most Persuasive Closing Argument EVER!”
Worth you time
+1
That’s when things used to be civil. Those days are long gone.
BLOAT!
“He can still become Governor of Virginia, but only if he’s a Democrat.”
Or the Premier of Canada (if he was Canadian).
“This kid wasn’t engaged in human trafficking, it was online harassment of a fellow student presumably done as a joke rather than something more malicious.”
Presumably it was a joke, by the DA does not see the humor, and I don’t think the judge will laugh.
Mark
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