Prosectors Say the Kansas Shooting of Garmin Engineers Was a Hate Crime (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Federal prosecutors have filed a hate crime charge against 51-year-old Kansas resident Adam Purinton, according to the Department of Justice. Purinton, who is accused of shooting three people in an Olathe bar, reportedly told a local Garmin engineer to "get out of my country" before opening fire. Purinton is currently being held on first-degree murder charges filed by local prosecutors. Today's indictment accuses Purinton of committing murder "because of Kuchibhotla's actual and perceived race, color, religion and national origin," with additional charges for the attempted murder of Madasani and violations of federal firearm statutes. The Justice Department declined to say whether it will pursue the death penalty, although it is authorized by the hate crime statute.

Comments

Re:Hold up

[kronix1986]

No. Federal offenses may be capital offenses, e.g. treason or terrorism. If it's being prosecuted by the federal government because the crime is federal, the punishment is obviously going to be federal - e.g. the death penalty for a race-driven multiple murder.

Re:I don't care WHY he did it

[SeattleLawGuy]

Murder is murder, I'm really a lot less interested in why than what he did. The concept of "hate crimes" is a completely broken one, but at least the guy is getting prosecuted. Hope there is a fair trial and justice is served.

For most crimes, the reason that you did a thing matters. The classic example is where you accidentally take the wrong laptop instead of deliberately taking someone else's laptop. In most jurisdictions you didn't commit a crime if you didn't intend to take someone else's laptop. Your mistake of fact (your belief that it was your laptop) negates an element of the crime: intent.

On the other hand, for murder, the whole "malice aforethought" or "premeditation" idea is really watered down. It can be premeditated murder even if it's a split-second decision, for example. Although in some jurisdictions you were traditionally excused a little bit if you caught the person in bed with your spouse before that happens. (I.e. voluntary manslaughter instead of murder.) (There are several types of homicide and the details vary a lot.)

There's also the point that there is definitely a significant moral divide between people who care about WHY someone did something harmful, and people who only care that it was done. Your position is absolutely valid, but there's plenty of room to disagree and there isn't a consensus about what the result should be. So we leave it to the legislature and courts, as a terrible way to decide the answer that's better than all of the other ways of deciding the answer. :)

FBI/State police out reach

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Just last week there was a panel of law enforcement officials having an out reach program at our Hindu temple. FBI, state attorney, local police chief, etc. One thing they said was "ethnic intimidation" can not be used as a charge by itself. It can only be an additional charge, on another crime. They said, paraphrasing here, "intimidation is a crime, harassment is a crime, no matter who does it to whom. If we can show that it was motivated by hatred or prejudice then we can tack on an additional ethnic intimidation charge. If we can not prove this we will not add this charge. Sometimes adding an iffy secondary charge makes the jury dismiss the primary charge as well. Sometimes the press focuses on us not making the ethnic intimidation charge and people don't notice we made a standard plain vanilla intimidation charge. Report all harassment, all intimidation. Even if we can not charge the ethnic intimidation, we can make the primary charge stick. Even if the ethnic intimidation is not charged, just regular harassment/intimidation charge is enough to send the signal that these are crimes and there are consequences. Victims not reporting crime emboldens criminals, even more than charges getting dismissed. "

All the people who attended it were fairly affluent well educated Indians. I am sure in every community outreach people who have the time, energy and motivation to listen to bunch of law enforcement officials on a Wednesday evening would be fairly affluent and well educated. Made us realize despite conflicting media portrayals these are just plain hard working underpaid unsung unheralded Americans trying to do the best job they can.

Re:Hold up

[rtb61]

A hate crime, I don't get it. I can not imagine anyone would shoot some one on purpose because they liked them. Are they not all hate crimes?