Just before Thanksgiving a Black family in suburban New York city found a cross burning in their yard. The police have arrested 21 year old Christopher Hudak for this crime.
Police have charged a 21-year-old Cortlandt man with burning a cross on a black family’s lawn the night before Thanksgiving, and prosecutors said he threatened to slit a potential witness’ throat.
Christopher Hudak of 27 Ridge Road is the older brother of one of the girls involved in a fight at Hendrick Hudson High School with Timothy Artope, 15, the oldest son of the family victimized by the cross burning.
Hudak, charged with first-degree aggravated harassment, a felony, was arraigned this afternoon in Peekskill City Court. His lawyer denied the allegation, but entered no formal plea.
City Judge William Maher set bail at $10,000 and issued nine orders of protection, seven for members of the Artope family and two for people in whom Hudak confided about the cross burning. Prosecutors say Hudak threatened to slit the throat of one of those individuals if they told anyone about the crime.
Wesley Artope, Timothy’s father, welcomed the news that an arrest had been made so quickly.
“I’m relieved that someone is being held accountable, and I’m relieved that my family can relax as far as feeling that they were under any danger.”
Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore said at a news conference this morning that Hudak was charged under a section of the law established in June 2006 that makes cross burning a hate crime.
Police charged Hudak late last night after searching his home. An alibi he had given police earlier in the week broke down, police said, prompting them to obtain a search warrant that turned up computer records that led to his arrest.
I used to live in Peekskill and I find the cross-burning there to be surprising. Although Peekskill & the surrounding towns have a long history of violent racism (see the Paul Robeson incident), these days it’s a lot more subtle.
I do like that he’s defended by friends as not being a racist. Even though he told them he intended to burn a cross. Nope. Not a racist.
Yeah, there’s always a “he’s not racist” defense. I don’t know what the hell they think a racist is.
The incident actually happened in Cortland, which is probably less tolerant than Peekskill. But I tend to think that Westchester is fairly tolerant–especially compared to Long Island and even compared to many parts of New York City.
Oh wow… I live in Tarrytown. How did I not hear about this? Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Maybe I’ve been paying too much attention to national, not enough to local.
Wait, cross burning wasn’t considered a hate crime until 2006?
E to the M – it’s actually pretty complicated, but it makes sense when you look at it.
IANAL, but I’ve had it explained to me:
Remember that there is no specific “don’t burn a cross on a black dude’s lawn” law. Hate crimes are about intent – so the idea is the’re assault, and then there’s a hate-crime version of assault, when you assault someone because of their race.
Because of the first amendment, you can’t arrest someone for hating alone, or for thinking hateful thoughts, or even for saying hateful things. There has to be a real actual violation of another human being for it to be a hate crime. A clear threat, at least.
So, for something to be a hate-crime, it has to violate a real law. And hate-crimes generally only include severe violations. When the laws were drafted, nobody really thought about hate-crime credit-card fraud or things like that.
Now, consider, beyond the hate, what non-hate crime a cross-burning represents. Assault? It’s too ambiguous for judges to clearly define it as a threat. Trespassing? Hardly a severe crime.
So the odd concept of “Giant offensive trespassing flaming statement of raw, disgusting hatred” kinda slipped through the massive hole in hate-crimes legislation made necessary by the first amendment. So it took lawmakers a while to properly plug it.
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