Hate Crime Legislation versus the Legacy of Lynch Law in the U.S.: The Struggle against a Biased Popular Justice

Abstract

In 1998 the atrocious dragging death of James Byrd, a black unemployed man, in Jasper, Texas, and the savage fatal beating of Matthew Shepard, a homosexual student, in Laramie, Wyoming, aroused excessive medial and political attention throughout the U.S., animating the discussion of hate crime legislation. It was not just the gory details of the two gruesome killings that triggered a national public outrage, but, above all, the apparently racist and homophobic motives that underlay the despicable deeds of the prejudiced perpetrators. James Byrd had agreed to be given a ride in a truck by three drunken men with ties to white supremacist organizations (cf. King 48f., 112), who, however, chained him to their car and dragged him to death, dismembering his body along the road. At least one of the three men demonstrably took Aryan pride in their murder of a black man, not showing any signs of repentance, aware that he might have to face the death penalty for his deed (cf. King 127ff.)¹. Matthew Shepard was offered a ride by two men who pretended to be gay, robbed, pistolwhipped, tortured, and then tied him to a fence like a scarecrow in a remote, rural area (cf. Loffreda 5). A few days later he died of his severe injuries in hospital. There were strong hints that the brutal nature of this killing had resulted from the perpetrators’ internalized homophobic attitude (cf. Loffreda 6, 145). The victims’ relatives and lobbying groups expressed their concern about a lack of emphatic denunciation of the alarming violent excesses of bias in both murders through legal restraints. Thus, they called for enhanced state and federal hate crime legislation.

“Closing Arguments Today in Texas Dragging-Death Trial”, CNN 22 Feb 1999, 16 July 2008 〈http://www/cnn.com/US/9902/22/dragging.death.03/〉.