There’s some judicial drama surrounding 20-year old. Sean Kennedy’s May 16th death. A grand jury has reduced accused killer Andrew Holler’s murder rap to involuntarily manslaughter. And Kennedy’s mother ain’t happy.
I feel like my son has been murdered again.
There’s not justice for Sean, and this position makes it very clear that we need hate crime laws in South Carolina and in this nation. We need to make sure that nothing like this will ever happen to any one of our children or citizen.
While there will probably be more hate crimes, President Bush could sign the recently-passed federal hate crime laws to protect citizens. Will he do that? Probably not. Why? Because he’s relevant. During a press conference yesterday, dear old Bush told reporters he vetoes bills because “[It’s] one way to ensure that I am relevant; that’s one way to ensure that I am in the process. And I intend to use the veto.”
With regard to the Holleran’s trial, we’re not sure whether we’re as enraged as Mrs. Kennedy. Did Holleran intend for Kennedy to die. Doubtful. Should he be tried for murder, then?
allen bardin
This senseless death happened in the most fundamental, evangelical, GOP-ridden part of the state. And our attorney general is vehemently anti-gay, so don’t expect any hate-crime ANYTHING to go over here. Paraphrasing an old Charles Pierce quote, if Democrats ever give this country an enema, South Carolina will be where they insert the tube.
Lance Lary
Tragically ridiculous.
Jeff
“Did Holleran intend for Kennedy to die. Doubtful. Should he be tried for murder, then?”
What if I set a building on fire that was owned by a Chinese man because I hate Chinese people? If someone died, would I be excused from a murder charge because I set the fire at a time when I thought no one would be in the building?
The answer is yes, most likely. That doesn’t however make it right and it certainly isn’t justice.
Mr. B
That’s horrifying.
Smitty
Intent is a tricky thing. If it can be proven (and I think that in this case, it can) that the defendant did not intend to kill his victim, then the only way he could possibly be charged with murder is under whatever South Carolina’s equivalent of the “felony-murder” statute is called. What that means is that if anyone (not just the victim) dies as the direct result of the defendant committing the felony in question, the defendant can be charged with that person’s death. If this crime doesn’t qualify for that, then the best they can do is manslaughter.
Since the prosecutor initially intended to go with a murder charge, and had to back off of it, it looks like whatever the defendant did didn’t qualify as felony-murder in SC… different states word the law different ways, but all of them have an equivalent to F-M in some form or another.
It’s unfortunate, but it looks like the prosecutor is making an honest effort to nail this guy as hard as he can under current law. A hate crime law would have more than likely helped, but I’m pretty sure that SC will be one of the last states to adopt one.
Bill Perdue
When beatings and murders occur, and they’ll be increasing as the totalitarian bigot christians ramp up their hate ‘crusade’ to influence the 2008 campaign, we have to be prepared to launch lawsuits and insure that we’re in the jury box when these cases come to court. Our worst failure as a movement is that usually these incidents go by without picket lines, demonstrations, press conferences. Often no law suits are filed.
Every year about twenty of us are lynched or murdered and about 2000 are beaten. And uncounted incidents of harassment take place, many aimed at the youngest GLBT folk in middle schools and high schools.
We OWN the moral high ground on these issues. Matthew Sheppard, Brandon Teena, Gwen Arujo and Shakia Gunn and uncounted other victims paid a blood price for it.
We need to take the offensive on the issue of violence and duplicate the brilliant work of the Southern Poverty Law Center who convincingly broke the back of the KKK. Look at their site at http://www.splcenter.org or contact http://www.lambdalegal.org, http://www.nclrights.org or http://www.aclu.org. And toss a few bucks there way while you’re at it.
We can beat our tormenters, whether they’re street thugs, elected and appointed government figures, superstitious shysters, or cops if we let no attack go unanswered.