Attorney General John Ashcroft has authorized federal
prosecutors to pursue the death penalty against a man charged with
killing two women at a secluded campsite in Virginia's Shenandoah
National Park -- slayings seen as an anti-gay hate crime,
reports the Washington Post. Darrell Rice is charged with
capital murder in the deaths of Julianne Williams and Laura
"Lollie" Winans, two victims who, prosecutors have quoted Rice as
saying, "deserved to die because they were lesbian whores." Since
the grisly crime was committed in a national park, federal
prosecution was triggered. According to the Post:
Although bias against gay people is not an aggravating factor under the terms of the federal death penalty law, prosecutors are permitted in general to seek harsher penalties in crimes that are shown to be motivated by such bias. Rice's case marks the first time that prosecutors in Virginia have invoked a 1994 law making it possible to seek the harder penalties for crimes motivated by bias against gay people.
It remains to be seen if invoking the death penalty will prove controversial. In the Matthew Shepard slaying case, some gay groups that support hate crimes legislation, which increases penalties for crimes motivated by bias, also belonged to liberal coalitions opposed to the death penalty. (See, for example, Death Penalty in Shepard Case Slammed by Activists.) Even before the Shepard trial, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force had passed a resolution opposing the death penalty as a criminal sanction because, among other reasons, they claimed it's "disproportionately applied to poor people and people of color."
The conundrum: If the penalty for premeditated murder is either life in prison or death, and if hate crime laws bump up the penalty, you wind up with death. When progressive gays support hate crime bills but oppose capital punishment (often labeling it inherently racist), it parallels their call to let gays serve in the military while opposing U.S. military action as imperialist and (again) racist. Let's add lobbying for private-sector anti-discrimination laws but finding capitalism so objectionable that corporations are condemned, for their corrupting influence, when sponsoring floats in gay pride marches. Or demanding an AIDS Cure Now while trying to limit the incentive of drug company profits. And, of course, supporting the right of gays to wed while holding that marriage is an oppressive patriarchal institution. Somehow, they don't see that you can't have it both ways.
I generally oppose hate crime laws and believe it is criminal
acts that should be prosecuted, not the underlying thought of the
perpetrator. As it happens, I also oppose the death penalty, but
not because I think it's a tool for class oppression. In fact, I
find it persuasive that executions serve some role as a deterrent.
But I can't get beyond the belief in my gut that killing killers
who are not currently trying to kill you is morally indefensible --
and also gives the state too much power. You may disagree with me
on that, but at least my dual opposition is not inconsistent.
--Stephen H. Miller