Update: I wrote this post this afternoon before the announcement that prosecutors will not bring hate crimes charges in this case. I’ll make a more detailed update tomorrow.
So I guess that some of the people in the West Virginia case have long histories of violence, including killing people. Check this out from the New York Times:
The Brewster family and their trailer has a history of violent crime, the police said.
Mr. Brewster killed his stepfather there when he was 12, the authorities said, and served time at a juvenile correction facility.
In July 1994, Mrs. Brewster shot and killed an 84-year-old woman she was looking after, also in the trailer, according to court records.
Mrs. Brewster, who was charged with first-degree murder, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and served six years at a state correctional facility. She was paroled in 2000.
In 2005, two men got into a fight outside the trailer, the police said, ending with a fatal stabbing.
In January, the police were again called to the trailer, where they found a man who had been slashed across his abdomen; the man survived, according to court documents, and Mr. Brewster was a witness in that case.
Also being held in the case of the young woman were Danny J. Combs, 20, who was charged with sexual assault and malicious wounding; George A. Messer, 27, who was charged with assault during the commission of a felony and battery; Karen Burton, 46, who was charged with malicious wounding, battery and assault during the commission of a felony; and her daughter, Alisha Burton, 23, who was charged with assault during the commission of a felony and battery. The four were being held in $100,000 bond each.
The Brewsters were being held pending bond hearings.
The authorities said they were still deciding whether to file additional charges, of hate crimes, against the defendants.
“The whole family is shocked,” a sister of the victim said.
Relatives said the victim has mild learning disabilities but graduated from high school. The relatives would not comment on whether the victim was living at home or had a job.
It would seem to me that the fact that the victim has learning disabilities also makes the release of her name more suspect, and if you watch this video, it does not appear that the victim is in any shape to consent to have her name released to the whole world.
On a side note, clearly these people are dangerous, violent, and disgusting, but they didn’t do this because the are Appalachians, rural whites, or poor whites. They did this because they are criminals, thugs, and racists, so I will not be accepting any comments or commentary like these:
Hillbilly Hell in West Virginia
Mama! Mama! Look At The White Trash!
I know plenty of hill folks and poor whites, and the vast majority are not at all like these wackos.
The case is shaping up oddly like the Newsom/Christian murders: if you believe in hate crime laws, it sure looks like they should be applied, and yet they’re not.
Since the entire subject of thought crime troubles me, I’m content if they throw the book at these people for the things they did, from kidnapping to rape and torture.
will, it’s not just a ‘thought crime’ if you act on it. Once you actually commit a heinous crime, the law is supposed to divine into your mind and your motives. If we designate harsher sentences based on motive, is that punishing ‘thought crime’?
That being said, I’m ambivalent about some cases of hate crime. I don’t disagree with it as a concept – I can imagine many cases where the term should apply. No, a murder is not a murder is not a murder; there are gradations of harm, just as there are degrees to murder. If I kill someone who owes me 5000 bucks, there’s an implicit threat to that set of people who owe me four-digit-or-more sums of money. If racists kill a black guy in a town with a history of racial oppression, for no other reason than he’s black, and perhaps in reaction to a recent events that highlighted racial division (which the victim is associated with because he’s black), an entire community is being implicitly threatened.
However, in a case where a couple of dirt poor, otherwise powerless white guys assault a black person in a modern, majority black neighbourhood of a major city, do the same arguments apply?
Apologies if this is all too much of a tangent for post number two.
sylphhead, I’m comfortable distinguishing between degrees of intent: carelessness, insanity, and the desire for personal gain are very different things and sentencing should reflect that. But when you start slicing cases finer than that, you are dealing with thought crime—that’s the reason for the extra punishment with hate crimes.
But there’s never been any serious evidence that extra punishment prevents the worst crimes. A jaywalker may decide not to jaywalk if the sentence is great, but murderers and rapists don’t seem to weigh punishment—compare murder rates in states with the death penalty to those without it, if you doubt me. Hate crime laws are symbolic—and the symbolism is confused. Is one sort of human life worth more than another?
I understand why people are convinced the one case involved black racism and the other involved white racism. I also understand why neither might have been racially motivated. And ultimately, I conclude that the crimes in both cases are horrific, and the sentences will be long, and that’s as it should be.
I’m wondering, if the victim had not had mild learning disabilities, would their name be mentioned? It sounds to me like another case of people wanting to treat those who have any form of disability, no matter how severe or not, like they’re children. I hope they gave the victim the choice to have their name posted or not.
Also as well, not posting the victims name but mentioning their mild disability says if someone is disabled they are not worthy of being acknowledged as a person. This may justify to some ignorant people, that the victim therfore was meaningless. That it was just one more “retard” knocked off.
People need to recognize that it is important now to treat those with learning disabilites or any form of disability as a person. Put at least their first name in the article, or perhaps don’t both mentioning their disablity. We don’t need anymore Cure Autism Now nutjobs seeing this as a justification to “cure” (a.k.a Genocide) those who have a gene for a form of Autism. It sends the message that all disabled people are the same, they are not. They are just as unique and individual as the NTs who wrote that article.
Recently there was recently a home invasion in sleepy Cheshire CT, deep in the heart of Yankee-land, committed in part by a guy in his 20’s from a well-off family that was horrific beyond belief.
So, I agree, let’s not slime poor Southern whites for atrocities committed by the deranged.
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I eagerly await all the MRAs who went nuts over the Duke rape accusations to ride in and defend this poor family, no doubt unjustly accused by an anti-white, sexist prosecutor. :P
It would seem to me that the fact that the victim has learning disabilities also makes the release of her name more suspect
Um. Hello. “Learning disabilities” is a very wide spectrum, and having “learning disabilities” doesn’t mean somebody is mentally incompetent.
The additional info makes me lean more toward “evil and thuggish” and less toward “racially motivated.”
Let me put another spin on that “additional information” which commentors are using to nullify the racial animus. Folks have been f*cking folks whom they hate since time immemorial. Do you think the slave owners that took the “black wenches” to bed thought of them any more than as niggers and chattel?
That there might have been a previous “relationship” between the victim and one of the perpetrators does not nullify or even ameliorate the patently racial hatred all of them had against this woman. And to come at it from another perspective, the law might say that Brewster might not have had racial animus (although I hold with my argument), but that in no way nullifies the racial hatred of the other “humans” in this case.
Mythago, are you saying that you think the charges in this case are incorrect? Or that you don’t think the accused are guilty? Why?
I don’t know what this woman’s disbilities are, but until I have some reason to think otherwise, I’m going to (1) assume she’s an adult generally competent to manage her own affairs; and (2) conjecture that she may simply believe that, having been assaulted by criminals and having nothing to be ashamed of, she ought to stand up, be counted and demand justice.
It may be otherwise, but if that’s what it is, good for her. Good for her for knowing it’s not her fault and being willing to say it to all the assholes and misogynists. Good for her for refusing to be cowed. Good for her for believing that she has a right to accuse her tormentors. If she can say, “what was done to me was wrong,” good for her. Self-blame and self-doubt are among the patriarchy’s most potent weapons. If she is free of them, good for her.
Sharon, while I completely agree that people like Thomas Jefferson were racist rapists, do you therefore conclude there was racial hatred in the Christian/Newsom murders?
Will, this isn’t my thread, but as a commenter and moderator here, I’d like to ask you to back off a bit from coopting this thread.
Will, I’m going to repeat verbatim what I posted over at KeithBoykin.com on the same subject:
Basically, the way the hate laws are set up there has to be some indicator other than the viciousness of the crime and race of the perpetrators/victims that specifically shows the motivation for the crime was race. As I pointed out, in the W. Va case, the word “nigger” was not only expressed verbally, but was carved into the victim repeatedly and the in-bred idiots also puportedly stated that they were brutalizing her because she was a “nigger.”
No one is saying that there wasn’t racial animus in the Christian/Newsome crime, but there aren’t any facts pointing to that other than the victims’ race. Now, if the idiots in that case had been as stupid as the W. Va idiots, and had stated out right to the authorities that they targeted the couple because they were white, then the hate crime statute would attach.
Also, as I pointed out at KeithBoykin: To be clear, all of this crime comparison gets us no where when we can’t come to a consensus about the humanity of the victims in both cases. I know the black-on-white crime heralds want to wave the flag, “but what about us?” And I’m saying, where any human has been violated and brutalized, then it is a matter of hatred of all and stop thinking “your victim” is more sympathetic than “my victim” as though we were comparing whose marbles are bigger on some racial playground.
Will, here would be a good place to talk about whether hate crimes are thought crimes, and also to find many of the moderators’ opinions on the subject.
Again, I don’t know for sure that Rachel S. isn’t okay with that topic being in this thread, but it feels very painful to me, and it feels like it could easily end up in one of those crushing scenes we’ve seen on the blog when we’re talking about black women’s victimization — for instance the mess when a white man made nasty remarks to a native american woman about the rape she’d suffered, implying that she was making it up.
Clearly, I know that you’re not that kind of guy, Will, but I’ve been around this blog long enough to see the kind of hate that can get easily tossed about when a black woman is a victim of sexual violence. I’m sure people would be glad to address you on the other thread.
Again, Rachel S. can contradict me if she disagrees.
I apologize for the “in-bred” reference as Rachel rightly pointed out that the stereotype of “hillbillies” is playing too heavily in this case. This is just another instance of criminally insane folk run amok who just happen to be of a certain demographic.
Why is there this assumption that those who committed these horrific crimes are “deranged”? And what does “deranged” mean, exactly? I haven’t read all the articles, but has there been any or many references about the sanity of those involved?
Mythago, are you saying that you think the charges in this case are incorrect? Or that you don’t think the accused are guilty?
No, joe, as you’re well aware, I’m sarcastically pointing out that here we have a case of a black women accusing a group of whites of a terrible crime of sexual violence. Yet there is no public outcry as to how we should withhold judgment until all the facts are in and the accused are innocent until proven guilty–as there was in the lacrosse players’ case, well before there was any real indication that the accusations were false.
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Mandolin, concerns noted and understood.
Sharon, we completely agree here: “where any human has been violated and brutalized, then it is a matter of hatred of all and stop thinking “your victim” is more sympathetic than “my victim” as though we were comparing whose marbles are bigger on some racial playground.” That’s at the heart of my concern with hatred laws. (But I’ll say no more about that in this thread, I promise!)
will, “let me get a last word in and then everyone has to shut up” is a pretty lame arguing tactic. I do hope somebody will start a thread about hate crimes, because you either don’t understand what they are or pretend you don’t.
Mythago, who doesn’t want to make a last comment as they go? I thought it was nicer to leave noting that I agree with the heart of Sharon’s concern.
And that can’t be an arguing tactic when mandolin has asked me to be quiet. You have to stick around to argue.
And, last, I have read a great deal about the theory of hate crimes, including the post here that mandolin suggested. When people disagree with you, it does not necessarily mean they are ignorant or, a truly bizarre notion, pretending that they’re ignorant. It may simply mean they have drawn different conclusions than you.
Mythago, who doesn’t want to make a last comment as they go?
will, most of us learned that “No tagbacks!” stopped being a valid argument sometime after grade school.
mythago, since I tried to end the discussion with Sharon on a note of common ground, I’ll try to do the same with you: you’re entirely right that no one should make a point and declare the conversation is over. But that wasn’t what was happening here; mandolin asked me to drop the subject, so I have.
I’m leaving this thread now. You’re welcome to tagback! I’m subscribed to this entry, at least for another day or two; I’m happy to read what others have to say.
I hereby declare the meta-discussion of whether or not parting shot comments are legitimate, over on this thread. You may take it to the open thread, if you want. (Or, for that matter, take the discussion of hate crime laws to the open thread, if you want.)
“sylphhead, I’m comfortable distinguishing between degrees of intent: carelessness, insanity, and the desire for personal gain are very different things and sentencing should reflect that. But when you start slicing cases finer than that, you are dealing with thought crime—that’s the reason for the extra punishment with hate crimes.
But there’s never been any serious evidence that extra punishment prevents the worst crimes. A jaywalker may decide not to jaywalk if the sentence is great, but murderers and rapists don’t seem to weigh punishment—compare murder rates in states with the death penalty to those without it, if you doubt me. Hate crime laws are symbolic—and the symbolism is confused. Is one sort of human life worth more than another?”
will, there are a lot more factors that are taken into consideration besides motive of the accuser, any one of which can be twisted into saying that ‘some victims are worth more than others’ by anyone with an audience gullible enough.
But I followed Mandolin’s link, and even from a perfunctory glance, I’m really liking Lu’s post number 2. You say you read that thread already, and presumably, in your own mind, discounted the arguments there. I’m curious as to your response: do you not see the parallels between hate crime and terrorism?
sylphhead, I’ll answer that over here.
I’m posting this late, but I had written a letter of protest to the Washington Post ombudsman when the Post ran the woman’s name. She responded that the Post should have explained why and the reason is the woman’ s *mother* had given permission to use her name to show “that the victim was a human being, not just a victim” or something along those lines.
Wonder how the actual victim feels about it?
lou, every report I’ve seen says that both the woman and her mother wanted her name released.