Black-on-White Hate Crime Perps Guilty
After a slew of L.A. Times articles casting doubt on the evidence, it turns out that the youths charged in that black-on-white hate crime in Long Beach have been found guilty.
Read the linked article, which (to me) drips with sympathy for the defense. Sample quote:
[Kiana] Alford, 18, was able to reconstruct the incident in extraordinary detail, describing who in the scrum punched and kicked which woman — including who threw lemons and pumpkins.
“That’s the one throwing lemons,” she told police of a 14-year-old girl she had never met. “She hit at least two people with them.”
Praise for Alford’s abilities’ as a witness — or pro-defense sarcasm?
Read it all — and you be the judge!
Oh, by the way: in a group beating, you don’t have to show which person administered which blows, if you can show all the defendants participated in the beating. Read the article in vain for that legal tidbit.
P.S. Another unbiased quote: “Bouas accused the defendants — and one 13-year-old boy in the audience — of being gang members.”
Because there are no 13-year-old gang members.
For what it’s worth — and it’s worth a lot to me — Mrs. P. personally knows the prosecutor and likes her.
The Dog-trainer has set up another “rush to judgement.”
MikeH (e12ecc) — 1/26/2007 @ 10:42 pmI think you could find similar stories in Mississippi papers circa 1962. Just a few details would be different.
Kevin Murphy (0b2493) — 1/27/2007 @ 12:53 amI think that is kind of the point Kevin. It was wrong circa 1962 and turned around it’s still wrong now.
ot: My Plan for America
Lord Nazh (d282eb) — 1/27/2007 @ 4:43 amThis article is full of reporter opinion. This statement makes it appear that the defendants are just ordinary, simple, innocent children:
TimesDisliker (ef0e63) — 1/27/2007 @ 8:06 amI got a kick out of the caption in the “photo gallery” which said “questions have been raised about community race relations and a perceived lack of leadership from city officials.” Because, you know, the only thing keeping me from beating up strangers not of my race is the leadership of city officials.
Brian Moore (7700b8) — 1/27/2007 @ 8:16 am“Oh, by the way: in a group beating, you don’t have to show which person administered which blows, if you can show all the defendants participated in the beating. Read the article in vain for that legal tidbit.”
So very true; in fact, had someone pulled out a knife and stabbed one of the victims, everyone participating in the beating can be found liable for that consequence, even murder, if it was found to be foreseeable.
The Times focus is on some vague feeling of the prosecution not being fair. They love to humanize the juveniles as track and field athletes and good students but seem to gloss over the impact of the incident to the victims.
The Times has trouble with the story because it contradicts their politically correct bias.
B.C. (8d2cdc) — 1/27/2007 @ 8:23 amBC:
I agree. Joe Neff, a reporter who covered the Duke case, cautions reporters against looking for a theme in a story. As summarized by K.C. Johnson at Durham-in-Wonderland, Neff believes that “reporters need to beware of meta-narratives – instead, they must rely on the facts.” This LA Times’ article has meta-narrative written all over it.
Too many journalists write to further a theme rather than to report facts. Journalists are supposed to report facts, not tell stories, but I’d wager modern journalists are encouraged to tell stories in journalism schools and at their jobs. It’s a disservice to the stories they are supposed to report and to the public they serve.
DRJ (e69ca7) — 1/27/2007 @ 11:07 amJournalism 101
I just finished reading a fascinating book called “Made to Stick.” Its subject is effective communication. Communicating in such a way as to get people to remember what you told them and act on it in a positive way; in other words, effective advertising, propaganda, etc.
I all comes down to telling stories. And reporters are actually taught how to do this in journalism classes.
Nora Ephron, a successful screenwriter and sometime journalist “still remembers the first day of her journalism class. Although the students had no journalism experience, they walked into their first class with a sense of what a journalist does: a journalist gets the facts and reports them. To get the facts, you track down the five Ws – who, what, where, when and why.”
The teacher told the students to write about a faculty meeting requiring all the teachers to travel to the state capital for a course on a new teaching method. He gave them names, dates and places in great detail.
After the students had written their stories, he told them that the REAL lead of the story was “There will be no school next Thursday.”
“It was a breathtaking moment, Ephron recalls. “in that instant I realized that journalism isn’t about regurgitating the facts but about figuring out the point.”
As they say in the computer world, reporter’s biases are not a bug, they’re a feature. And the LA Times is filled with just such features.
moneyrunner (d5b4e1) — 1/27/2007 @ 2:23 pmThe New York Dog Trainer carries the story on Saturday’s A10 page and clearly implies — no, all but proclaims — it is a miscarriage of justice. Literally the first half of the 4 collumn quarter page account argues that it was a lyching, a rush to judgment, mob justice. that Ms Alford had ‘…no way for to have seen what she said she saw,” quoting Frank Williams, the defendant of one of the accused, which is how it ends.
John H. Costello (2ca414) — 1/27/2007 @ 8:31 pmI’m surprised that juvenile court proceedings are open to the public in California. The story is not totally bad. It does relate that one of the victims had her face smashed so badly that she will need reconstructive surgery to realign her eyes. Juxtaposed with the little s____s giggling and braiding each other’s hair. Maybe the reporter had to be subtle to get it by his editor. Or the editor by his publisher. It sounds like a wilding to me. Feral kids roaming the streets looking for a victim. I would like to be at the disposition hearing. That’s when their backgrounds will come out in detail.
nk (47858f) — 1/27/2007 @ 9:04 pmLisa Munoz in the NTDT does not mention the hair braiding, but did mention that Lauren Hymen is awaiting surgery to repair 12 facial fractures. NT more PC than LA?
John H. Costello (059d61) — 1/28/2007 @ 5:59 amChannel 7 News was equally biased, sticking largely with scenes of distraught parents of defendants, never mentioning the actual injuries to the girls.
Patricia (824fa1) — 1/28/2007 @ 9:25 amNK-
Under CAL WIC 676 juvenile proceedings are open to the public for serious crimes. These are generally your CAL WIC 707(b) offenses, and gang crimes.
Joel B. (955208) — 1/28/2007 @ 5:36 pmThank you, Joel B.
nk (d5dd10) — 1/28/2007 @ 7:06 pmPatterico, if you think the local Times take was biased, you should read the NY Times’ “coverage” of this past Saturday(as another poster mentions above). It is, in a word, unreal. I subscribe to the NY Times and take the goofy and the slanted with the good and great it offers, but I was steamed reading an incredibly lopsided, outrageously biased piece of writing that does indeed present the case so that any unknowing person reading it would be outraged–on behalf of the convicted teenagers. Much is made of the (it’s strongly suggested) dubious at best testimony of the female witness, but NO mention made at all of ANY OTHER EVIDENCE presented but hers. NO mention of the blood on defendants’ clothes, the cel phone of a victim on one defendant, the black man who was a huge witness and in fact stepped in and did his best to break up the fight. Nothing about any of that. It’s even floated that the victims were drunk(as if that would make any difference–would it have? is it permitted to stomp, hit and beat an intoxicated person? or does that simply make the victims look slightly skanky? In any case, never proven that they were drinking or intoxicated-not was it relevant, as far as I know), and that it’s likely(of course, according the the defendents)they themselves were actively engaged in some sort of scrum with dozens of black guys and girls. Sure, uh-huh.
Jen (e52c22) — 1/29/2007 @ 10:59 amIt’s just unbelievable–totally one-sided. Bad, bad reportage.
OH, and I’d like to add: there was no mention made of the serious injuries to the victim with the dozen broken bones–in hre face.
Does anyone want to bet on whether that would have been deemed pertinent if the races were switched in this sorry, hateful crime?
Racial hatred in this city is real, but the old cliches don’t hold any longer, nor have they for decades. I was raised both at home and in school with the lessons of Dr. King and the prime importance of respecting and welcoming–embracing–other races, in paticular blacks. That was the zeitgeist of the 60s-70s, post-Watts. Yet what I see now and was awakened to during the OJ circus was that the inculcated hate, suspicion and bias is unchecked in the other direction, as if nothing had happened between southern lynchings of the 20s-30s and the Los Angeles of the late 20th century to change white people’s attitudes(starting with kids like me). This case and what it reveals is grounds for a constructive, albeit painful discussion and examination of relations between racial groups in this state. Too bad that open discussion is shouted down by reactionary, angry, frustrated people who have not done a fantastic job with their own kids.
Jen (e52c22) — 1/29/2007 @ 11:10 amIn examining this case it is clear that serious crimes were committed — three victims, one with her face pretty much caved in. No legal justification such as self-defense. A big group of blacks against a small group of whites. Racial overtones.
Who did it? It is not enough to claim that everyone in a group assault is culpable. For guilt of specific offenses, and certainly for sentencing (or disposition), individual roles and actions must be properly ascertained and assessed. Blood on a defendant’s clothes? Pretty damning, unless she was rendering aide to the victim. Victim cell phone found in an accused’s car? Also helps to place one of those juvies there and grabbing loot.
These attackers cannot be absolved by their activities as track athletes and by the disbelief of their moms. (By the way, where are all the fathers in the press conferences and prayer protests?)
But there were a LOT of problems with this case. The eyewitness identification procedures were hopelessly inept, unfair, and suggestive. A tape-recorded interview with a key ID witness was undisclosed and then taped over, if we are to believe that lame excuse. The prosecutor, who Patterico’s wife knows and likes, was on a crusade, made gang allegations without basis, and didn’t recognize that ETOH means alcohol in police and medical shorthand. (She was surprised to learn that the victims had been drinking, even though every prosecutor learns to use that attack on defendants in their first days on the job.) What a fiasco.
But what the hey?! A crime occurred, we’ve got people to blame and punish. Who cares if one or two or a few of them may be the wrong ones, or even a bystander who intervened to render aid? Time for that D.A. conviction end-zone dance!! After all, the prosecutor is a nice woman who a blogger’s wife likes.
[I think the judge probably would have cared, right? And didn’t he acquit one of the minors?
So nosh, I know you’re an L.A. defense attorney. Were you an attorney in this case? You sure sound like one. — P
nosh (ee9fe2) — 1/31/2007 @ 1:55 pmNope, P — no firsthand involvement with this case. I’ll be very interested to see what happens at disposition (sentencing, in juvie court).
nosh (ee9fe2) — 1/31/2007 @ 10:48 pmIn Long Beach, 4 of the 9 convicted defendants were sentenced yesterday:
House arrest. Wow.
DRJ (e69ca7) — 2/3/2007 @ 2:15 pmSorry. Here’s a link on sentencing.
DRJ (e69ca7) — 2/3/2007 @ 2:17 pmAcceptable losses, DRJ! (Cynicism.) I doubt that that judge lives anywhere near where those kids can wild him.
nk (956ea1) — 2/3/2007 @ 3:42 pmHow sad the lesson we are teaching kids is that if its black on white and race is a factor than its not racism but if its white on black its racism. By having this double standard we are promoting racism because white kids like me grow up to join white power movements… I was involved in the NSM ( white power movement ) and this example of black on white hate crime is a recruitment tool.
Shively (1663f7) — 2/3/2007 @ 7:28 pmPlease refer to my comment #3 in the January 5 post about the Long Beach Case.
nosh (ee9fe2) — 2/4/2007 @ 9:38 amWill JESSIE JACKASSON now go there to ask for more lienaint sentences? JACKASSON SHOULD BUTT OUT
krazy kagu (91408b) — 3/9/2007 @ 7:56 amWhen are the civilized elements in our society going to say enough is enough and start using deadly force and fight back against these feral beasts?!
j davis (07b5bf) — 7/9/2008 @ 2:15 pm