Raging Red

Yesterday afternoon some local pastors held a press conference with the parents of Megan Williams, urging the prosecutor in Logan County to file hate crime charges and asking the U.S. Department of Justice to take over the case if the prosecutor decides not to pursue charges under West Virginia’s hate crime statute. You can watch the entire press conference here. I think the family had misunderstood an article that appeared in the Gazette yesterday morning with the headline “No hate charges in torture case,” because it didn’t specify that it was referring to federal hate crime charges. (In the article it did, but not in the headline, and I can see how someone could have misread the article.)

The state prosecutor has said that the investigation is still underway and that new charges, including hate crime charges, could be filed. Logan County Prosecutor Brian Abraham said they are initially focusing on the charges that carry the stiffest penalties — kidnapping, sexual assault, and malicious wounding.

At the press conference, Reverend Emanuel Heyliger made a compelling argument for filing hate crime charges. As I wrote yesterday, the purpose of a hate crime statute is to make a clear expression of community disapproval of crimes that target people because of things like their race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation (though West Virginia’s hate crime law doesn’t apply to sexual orientation). Reverend Heyliger made this point well (this is my transcription, which I edited in a couple places for clarity):

The family is aghast and totally devastated by the findings of the local prosecutor that this barbaric, heinous, despicable crime is not one where racial hatred has [permeated] the very core of this evil and sick treatment meted out to this young woman of African-American descent. You have to call it what it is.

There are three pastors here and they each have heard from the victim’s own testimony, own lips, about the racial invectives that were used while they were [committing] the brutal acts that were done to this young lady. There can be no backsliding at this time. The days of judicial apartheid are behind us. We cannot — with the world watching with bated breath to see justice in action — fumble in this opportunity to send a clear and unmistakable signal that we as a society will not and cannot condone such reprehensible conduct.

Mr. Logan Prosecutor, we are urging you to reconsider your findings regardless of who submitted — who gave you advice — and if you are unwilling or unable, we are calling on the Justice Department to intervene immediately and take over this case. We are not silent and we shall never be silent until there is full justice for Megan Williams, because thundering in the prodigious hills of West Virginia and sloping down the mountains to the valleys of our beautiful state, the words of the Prophet Amos are still true: “Let justice roll down like a mighty flood and over the land and the seas.”

It’s true that these people already face the possibility of life in prison based on the charges that have been filed. But what’s the point of having a hate crime statute if you’re not going to use it? The maximum penalty under WV’s hate crime law is ten years, so does that mean a prosecutor would never charge someone with a hate crime if they were already charged with a crime that carries a stiffer penalty? The purpose of charging someone with a hate crime isn’t just the penalty imposed — it has symbolic value.

In our criminal justice system, it’s very common for people to be charged with multiple crimes that carry sentences of varying lengths, even when one or more of those crimes already carries a life sentence. Courts sometimes impose consecutive life sentences, which is merely symbolic — a person can’t actually serve more than one life sentence. But courts do it because the community wants to impose a punishment for every act a person commits and every victim he harms. (There are practical reasons to do it too — if a conviction is overturned or a sentence is reduced on appeal, the other convictions and sentences are still in place.)

In the past couple of days, I have heard various reasons that hate crime charges may not be appropriate in this case:

• She apparently knew at least one of the six people before this crime occurred.
• She went of her own free will to the mobile home where she was held captive.
• The defendants already face life in prison.

I don’t find any of those reasons compelling. I’ve covered the third one already. As for the others, the fact that the victim knows the perpetrator does not negate the possibility that it’s a hate crime. I can see how it might be a factor that a prosecutor would consider in determining whether to file hate crime charges, but it alone doesn’t rule out the possibility. Whether she went to the mobile home of her own free will or not is irrelevant. If a gay man meets a guy in a bar, then goes home with him of his own free will, does that mean it’s not a hate crime if he gets brutally beaten up by the guy because he’s gay? From the reports I’ve read and heard, it sounds like she was lured there specifically so these people could do what they did to her.

Finally, I’ll note a question that was asked during the press conference that really rubbed me the wrong way. I have no idea who asked it (I do know it wasn’t Anna Sale from WV public radio, because I heard her asking other questions). Someone brought up reports that friends and/or neighbors of Megan Williams say she is perhaps a little too trusting. The reporter asked Megan’s parents whether she has a history of “making some poor choices.” What the hell? Sure, let’s just pile some blame and guilt on this woman and her parents. Her parents were obviously still very shaken about this whole thing, and her mother said Megan wakes up in the middle of the night yelling out to make sure her mother is still there. I think that reporter should have just kept that question about poor choices to herself. Sheesh.