U.S. Indicts 1st Anti-Gay Hate Crime

[UrbScotty]

Source: TPM

For the first time in history, the United States has issued an indictment in hate crime case involving a crime against an individual based on their sexual orientation, the Justice Department said Thursday:

A federal grand jury in London, Ky., returned a three-count indictment charging David Jason Jenkins, 37, and Anthony Ray Jenkins, 20, for kidnapping and assaulting Kevin Pennington, and for conspiring with each other and with other unnamed individuals to commit the kidnapping. The indictment charges the men with committing a hate crime in violation of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expanded federal jurisdiction to include certain assaults motivated by someone’s sexual orientation.

The two defendants allegedly kidnapped and assaulted Kevin Pennington on April 4 after having two women trick Pennington into getting into a truck with the defendants. They allegedly drove Pennington to “a secluded area of the Kingdom Come State Park in Kentucky and assaulted him,” according to the feds.

Read more: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/us-indicts-1st-anti-gay-hate-crime

[secondwind]

1. This country SOOO needs an enema. Sheesh!

[RKP5637]

2. K&R !!! n/t

[William769]

3. K&R!

[DisgustipatedinCA]

4. I'm looking for logic where it's likely none exists, but why?

If we make a starting assumption that these two hate gay people, for whatever reason, I still wonder why they'd do something like this. In other words, how did they make the quantum leap from "I hate gay people" to "I know, let's conspire to kidnap and beat a gay person"? The unwarranted feelings of hatred are bad enough, but what on earth drives people like this to actually act on that hatred in a violent way? I don't wish to sound like a naif, but even when I take the hatred for granted as a baseline starting point, I still can't understand when people act on this hate. If for no other reason than self-preservation, I'd think they'd opt to NOT act upon their hatred. And I'd be wrong.

[AlbertCat]

5. the quantum leap from "I hate gay people" to "I know, let's conspire to kidnap and beat a gay person

It's no quantum leap. It's a lynching. Just like they did/do to blacks.

[lunasun]

7. well this is in the comments after the article..............cant say it is a reason...but some light

.................................
I know all 4 of these idiots personally and have for MANY years. Alexis, Mable "Ashley", Anthony, and Jason all are bullies. They go in groups looking to fight people. Right before this happened with Kevin, Anthony and his underage brother Alex beat a Mexican so bad that he had to eat from a feeding tube. They have always been the type to be racists towards anything but a white heterosexual person. None of them come from good families. Alexis' family is truly trash in our town and the Jenkins' is scum, not to mention that David "Jason" is a secret homosexual himself. The sick part, in 2007 (I think) Ashley and Anthony's mother, Lisa, was taken on the same park they took Kevin, and cut into pieces and was put into the ground, She was missing many days before it was discovered. This is so sick and it hurts me to know that I'm from a community where racism and prejudice and hate is so much still alive. I pray that justice is done, to the fullest extent.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/04/12/2148377/two-eastern-kentucky-men-indicted.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy
-------------------------------------
BTW the victim does say he had rebuffed an advance from one of the attackers and also the attacker's sister so in their mind maybe that was enough of a reason.........

[DisgustipatedinCA]

8. they sound like a mess, for sure

It just seems to me that, in addition to being the right thing to do, a policy of live and let live is an easier, less litigious, and less incarcerated way to live one's life. I'm glad the federal government is prosecuting these zeros. Thank you for the information.

[Duncan Grant]

6. Additional link (Kentucky) with account of the crime:

Kentucky men face first-of-their-kind federal hate-crime charges @ Kentucky.com.


Anthony Ray Jenkins (L) and David Jason Jenkins (R)

[johnnypneumatic]

9. President Obama signed the bill October 28, 2009

There have been thousands of anti-gay hate crimes since then...
What took so long to actually enforce it, Holder?

[sarcasmo]

11. Kick!