- 04 Sep 2017 23:31
#14840451
Remember, 19 other people were also injured. It's not certain it will be charged as a federal hate crime, though:
Hindsite wrote:The FBI is supposed to be investing it as a civil rights hate crime. How can that be if a white woman got killed?
Remember, 19 other people were also injured. It's not certain it will be charged as a federal hate crime, though:
Even though the group that the Charlottesville suspect is alleged to have attacked seems to have included people from various demographic groups, federal prosecutors could argue that the suspect believed those people belonged to one group and targeted them because of that perception, according to Jack McDevitt, director of Northeastern University’s Institute on Race and Justice and the co-author of several books on hate crimes. “You don’t have to be a member of a particular group to be subject to a hate crime, if you’re perceived to be [from that group],” he says. The fact that the suspect appears to have been open about his white-supremacist beliefs could help with a hate-crime prosecution, McDevitt adds.
Federal authorities could also decide to let state prosecutors handle the case based on the local hate crime or civil rights laws. McDevitt points out that some states cover political affiliation in those laws, such as West Virginia. That does not appear to be the case in Virginia, but the hate crime law there does cover acts “committed for the purpose of restraining that person from exercising his rights under the Constitution or laws of this commonwealth or of the United States.” The U.S. constitution grants the right to assembly, as the counter-protesters in Charlottesville were doing at the time of the incident.
http://www.newsweek.com/jeff-sessions-c ... ime-651651