Oooh... do you think they'll change "Matthew Shepard Square" in North Hollywood (which is actually a triangle) based on this?
ABC? not FOX? Did I just hear that Satan has asked for earmuffs.
Still, a human life is a human life. What he did in the bedroom was his personal business, and what he was murdered for--homosexuality or a crime gone awry--is between him and his killers.
Sometimes I begin to see why so many people take a negative view towards the GOP.....
The fact that the left has to bring up this poor guy's name to "prove" how tough gays have got it is proof how Americans in fact don't give a damn what people do as long as they keep it private. ONE guy killed because he was gay proves what? That gays being killed for that is incredibly rare.
From a thread I authored April 19, 2001:
The more you learn about the Matthew Shepard killing, the less it looks like a hate crime. All the evidence points to the truth being that Shepard was chosen because to rob because he could be relied upon to jump in the truck that Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were riding in.
Important to consider is that McKinney and Henderson got into a fight with a some Hispanic teens later that evening, and it was McKinney's pistol-whipping of one of them that led police investigating that assault to the pistol-whipping murder of Shepard. McKinney was not charged with a hate crime in that incident, if he was charged at all.
The idea that the killing of Shepard was some sort of 'threatening message to the community' -- which used to be the narrow criteria separating "hate crime" from run-of-the-mill "crime" -- falls apart when you examine the case. Henderson -- who confessed and implicated McKinney as the one who initiated the attack that killed Shepard -- said that McKinney whacked Shepard in the skull with his gun after Shepard was still able to read the license plate number of the truck -- as he was ordered to do by McKinney. No anti-gay slurs were reported during the attack, according to all witness accounts that I have read. The "hate crime" charge hangs on the slim thread of the killers' use of anti-gay slurs when recounting the murder to their girlfriends (both were charged with being accessories after the fact and pleaded guilty to reduced charges).
The so-called "gay panic" defense that McKinney and his counsel came up with was blocked by the judge. In Wyoming, there are restrictions on diminished capacity defenses. Still, chances are the strategy probably would not have survived serious examination, considering that we now know that McKinney's insistence that Shepard had groped him was contradicted by his videotaped confession to the beating death.
It is not impossible that Shepard's killing was out of "hate," but we will never really know. That's because part of the bargain that saved Aaron McKinney from execution in that case was his agreement not to discuss the case -- a "self-imposed" gag order at the insistence of Shepard's parents and at the threat of life on Wyoming's death row. This was not just a prevention of Henderson potentially profiting from his crime, a la Mumia Abu-Jamal and John Wayne Gacy -- he can't even talk about the murder to a reporter for free.
That post-trial, post-sentencing gag order is surely a First Amendment violation, but it likely will never make it to the SCOTUS...or the front page of the NY Times, either.
I would be shocked if John Stossel wasn't behind this. And if not, even better -- it would mean that there is more than one reporter at ABC News that can think without Marc Halperin's assistance.
ABC will no doubt conclude that it was indeed a hate crime.
"The murder of Matthew Shepard was and is a heinous and viscous crime," ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider says.
hate crime laws are a liberal feel good joke..
ive always wondered by what measure a prosecutor/judge/etc is able to determine if the perp "hated" the victim or "really really really really didnt like" him/her.....
whats next... "aggressively pissed off" or "moderately annoyed" crimes?
My now deceased father knew the Shepard family in Casper. He said the whole family loved the PR that came with Matthew being a homosexual activist.
We ALL know about Mathew Shephard. Where are the stories and movies and activists for Jesse Dirkhising?
"The murder of Matthew Shepard was and is a heinous and viscous crime," ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider says.
From Encarta:
vis·cous [ vískess ]
| adjective | ||
| 1. thick and sticky: thick and sticky, reluctant to flow, and difficult to stir |
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| 2. physics having relatively high viscosity: used to describe a fluid that has a relatively high resistance to flow |
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| [14th century. From late Latin viscosus “sticky,” from Latin viscum “mistletoe, birdlime made from mistletoe berries,” of uncertain origin.] | ||
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