Next Rally Against Hate is Coming Soon...
"When a community expresses such strong and united outrage, when it comes time to sentence these animals, it does help to ensure they receive the maximum time in prison, allowed by law. "
---Zeke
"I have no regrets. No qualms whatsoever." So says Riverside Police Chief Russ Leach about his early, stakes-raising pronouncement that the RPD regarded the June 2002 stabbing death of Jeffery Owens as a "hate crime." A RivCo judge tossed the hate-crime charge, which carried a no-parole life term.
Leach: "Our investigation determined it was a brutal attack on Owens and his partner in a well-known gay parking lot. There were gay slurs."
Leach said that while it's common for charges to get reduced or dropped as a case churns through the system, it would have been nice if a jury had been able to hear the hate-crime evidence.
"Only by coming together as a community, can we make a united stand against the fear and hatred that can tear our society apart. As Californians, we will never tolerate those who commit crimes based on hate and prejudice. Let me assure you that the perpetrators of this crime will be persued to the fullest extent of the law."
--- CA Governor Gray Davis
"In this case, it sounds like it very well might be a jury question," said Mark Potok, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., a nonprofit organization that monitors hate crimes nationally. " . . . (But) it sounds more like a hate crime than not."
