Saturday, March 10, 2007

Why no hate crime?

None of the four defendants were found guilty of a hate crime. The jury’s decision surprised me. How could this not be a hate crime? One of the jurist explained that they thought the primary reason the defendants acted the way they did was because they were deceived. They thought Gwen had deliberately tricked the defendants into thinking he was a girl. And it was this deceit that they were reacting too not the fact that Gwen was transgender. Unfortunately, not a single time in the 2 trials, 16 weeks of testimony did a single transgender person take the witness stand. Would this have made a difference?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's hard to say if that would of made a differance. example: if she said she was single and it turned out she was married do you think they would have reacted that way??
thats deceit also. How could they not have been charged with a hate crime?