Indictment alleges man committed hate crimes The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Standing behind a table filled with rifles, handguns and homemade pipe bombs, authorities spelled out an array of charges against a 37-year-old man who they said was responsible for a wave of alleged hate crimes targeting synagogues and Jewish residents in his elegant Brooklyn Heights neighborhood. They said Ivaylo Ivanov is accused of spray-painting swastikas and spreading fliers reading “Kill All Jews” and “US hates you,” in at least 23 locations — buildings, sidewalks and cars — in a flurry of activity last September. He was already a suspect in those incidents when he called police on Jan. 20 to report a gunshot wound to his finger, and allowed responding officers into his apartment where they found the cache of weapons, said Inspector Michael Osgood, commander of the department’s Hate Crimes Task Force. At a news conference on Sunday, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes said Ivanov had been indicted on more than 100 counts of criminal mischief as hate crimes and illegal possession of explosives and weapons, and could face 25 years in prison if convicted on the most serious charge. “Hate crimes are attacks against the whole of society, not just the individuals or groups targeted,” Hynes said. At the same time, Hynes announced the arrest of a second suspect, Pavel Andreenko, in an unrelated case involving the painting of swastikas in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Flatbush and Sheepshead Bay last month.
Hate crime laws target thoughts and words, Richard Cohen Richard Cohen is a nationally syndicated columnist.
James von Brunn, who is alleged to have opened fire and killed a guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, is apparently a consummate bigot. His former wife said that his hatred of blacks and Jews “ate him alive like a cancer,” so it might seem appropriate that in addition to having been indicted last week for murder and gun law violations, he was also charged with hate crimes. At age 89, he proves that you are never too old to hate. He also proves the stupidity of hate crime laws. A prime justification for such laws is that some crimes really affect a class of people. The hate-crimes bill recently passed by the Senate puts it this way: “A prominent characteristic of a violent crime motivated by bias is that it devastates not just the actual victim ... but frequently savages the community sharing the traits that caused the victim to be selected.” No doubt. But how is this crime different from most other crimes? First, let us consider the question of which “community” von Brunn was allegedly attempting to devastate. He rushed the Holocaust museum, which memorializes the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis and their enablers. There could be no more poignant symbol for the Jewish community. Yet von Brunn killed not a Jew, but an African-American — security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns. So which community was affected by this weird, virtually suicidal act? Was it the Jewish community or the black community? Since von Brunn hated both, you could argue that it does not matter. But since I would guess that neither community now gives the incident much thought, the answer might well be “neither one.” So what is the point of piling on hate crimes to what von Brunn has allegedly done? Beats me. He already faces — at age 89, remember — a life sentence and, possibly, the death penalty. The real purpose of hate-crime laws is to reassure politically significant groups — blacks, Hispanics, Jews, gays, etc. — that someone cares about them and takes their fears seriously. That’s nice. It does not change the fact, though, that what’s being punished is thought or speech. Johns is dead no matter what von Brunn believes. The penalty for murder is severe, so it’s not as if the crime is not being punished. The added “late hit” of a hate crime is without any real consequence, except as a precedent for the punishment of belief or speech. Slippery slopes are supposedly all around us, I know, but this one is the real McCoy. Let us assume that the “community” is really affected by what we call a hate crime. I am Jewish. But even with von Brunn’s attack, I am more affected by a mugging in my neighborhood that might keep me from taking a walk at night that I am by a shooting at the Holocaust museum. If there’s a murder in a park, I’ll stay out of it for months. If there’s a rape, women will stay out of the park. If there’s another and another, women will know a real hater is loose. Rape, though, is not a hate crime. Why not? I doubt that any group of drunken toughs is going to hesitate in their pummeling of a gay or an African-American or a Jew on account of it being a hate crime. If they are not already deterred by the conventional penalties — prison, etc. — then why would additional penalties deter them? And if, in fact, they kept their mouths shut, refrained from the N-word or the F-word or the J-word and simply made the beating or the killing seem one triggered by dissing or some other sound reason, then they would not be accused of hate — merely of murder or some such trifle. If, though, they gave vent to their thoughts, they would be in for real trouble. For the most part, hate-crime legislation is just a sop for politically infl uential interest groups — yet another area in which liberals, traditionally sensitive to civil liberties issues, have chosen to mollify an entire population at the expense of the individual and endorse discredited reasoning about deterrence. In von Brunn’s case, the hate-crime counts are an obscenity. To suggest that the effects of this attack were felt only by the Jewish or the black communities — and not, for instance, by your average Washington tourist — ghettoizes both its real and purported victims. It’s a consequence that von Brunn himself might applaud.
hatecrime laws are stupid.....ALL CRIME IS HATE OR ANGER...even if it started off as love
here is a hate crime---I hate liver.....duh.......so the ranchers will now blame me for their decrease in sales and the government will have to cover it up with subsidies......
to call a crime a hate crime is to deflect from one's self the idea that they dont remotely have anything in common.....
it's just smoke.....dumb piece of legislation
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
This is obsurd at best! Does this mean that kids who go on a shooting rampage at school is committing a 'school hate crime'? How bout the postal workers who go on a shooting rampage at a post office...is that a 'postal hate crime'? When a serial killer goes out and rapes and murders women....is he committing a 'women hate crime'? And how bout the terrorists that flew innocent men, women and children through the twin towers. Were they committing an 'american hate crime'?
It is beyond ridiculous! A crime is a crime! dimwits!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
"While Foreign Terrorists were plotting to murder and maim using homemade bombs in Boston, Democrap officials in Washington DC, Albany and here were busy watching ME and other law abiding American Citizens who are gun owners and taxpayers, in an effort to blame the nation's lack of security on US so that they could have a political scapegoat."
stupid waste of time......we only live an average of what 78 years....pathetic waste of time.....CRIME IS HATE OR ANGER......
sh*t pretty soon we wont be able to tell the difference between mental diseases and whether or not someone is sane or insane.....this is a paradox at best.......it's like building a brick wall all around yourself......
shame shame shame on our legal eagles........notice I didn't say beagles........
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
I always say that anyone who kills someone is crazy, so how is insanity a defense?
I agree with you 100%. But here's the question.....do you think they can be rehabilitated and should they be released into society again, after rehabilitation?
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
I will ask AGAIN-----WHAT constitutes a hate crime?-----that would mean some folks(victims) are more equal than others......
I see an animal farm being born......
the problem is the equal punishment------and punishment that fits the crime
a woman can always call rape a hate crime a man can always call a stabbing a hate crime a parent can always call their child being denied 'proper' medical treatment a hate crime
the stupid list is endless........
paradox
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
That IS the problem. They set up these laws, with consequences for each offense and then sets a sentence for the crime. For example, that guy that abducted that little girl and kept her for 18 years in his backyard and fathered her 2 children....can he be rehabilitated? He was charged, convicted and served time for a rape BEFORE this little girl. AND his wife was just as nuts! So does he and his wife serve time and then get released yet again?
And what constitutes rehabilitation? Spending time behind bars or in a mental hospital for a bit and saying you learned your lesson and won't do it again? Hogwash!!!!
But this can't be constituted as a 'hate crime'. Cause this nutso, half baked guy didn't 'hate' her or her type. In fact it was just the opposite. He clearly had an obsession. So should we now have 'obsession crimes'?
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
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