Where is the Hate Taught ? It starts locally !

April 26, 2005, 6:02PM
4 juveniles charged in Santa Fe hate crime
By RUTH RENDON
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
SANTA FE, Texas— Four juvenile boys remained in custody today after being charged with spray painting racial slurs, burning a cross and leaving a noose on a tree at the home of a 65-year-old African-American resident over the weekend.
The four boys, who are white, are being held in the Galveston County Juvenile Justice Center in Texas City. The boys, ranging in age from 13 to 16, are charged with criminal mischief with a hate crime attachment, making the offense a third degree felony, Santa Fe Police Lt. Philip Meadows said.
-------------------
The Anti-Defamation League issued a statment today saying the organization had contacted Santa Fe police and federal authorities and is confident the matter is being investigated thoroughly.
"We also are grateful that the neighborhood rallied around the targeted family. But this incident serves as a reminder that we have a long way to go and much work to do to eradicate hatred from our community," said Martin Cominsky, southwest regional director for ADL.
Cominsky called the situation "sad" and attributed the alleged conduct of the boys to a "lack of understanding differences and a lack of knowledge about other people. What people don't know scares them."
--------------------
source: source: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3154821
----------------
Religious overtones color a murder in Texas
By SEAMUS McGRAW
The victim was a Jew, slaughtered in a Houston apartment, his throat slit so deftly with a 6-inch butterfly knife that he was nearly decapitated.
The killer was an Arab, a newly minted religious Muslim and the son of a millionaire Saudi businessman. He had been bailed out of trouble by the Saudi consulate after previous scrapes with the law, and in the hours after the slaying, authorities said, he plotted to flee to his homeland.
On the surface, the bizarre murder last summer of Ariel Sellouk at the hands of Mohammed Ali Alayed seemed to have all the elements of a classic hate crime, especially when viewed against the violence in the Middle East, continued uncertainty about American security in the wake of the September 11 attacks and the ongoing war on terrorism. But when Alayed appeared last week in a Houston courtroom to plead guilty to murder, there was no mention of terrorism or international intrigue.
The word "hate" with all its legal connotations was never even mentioned.
"It didn't help me," said Stephen St. Martin, assistant district attorney of Harris County.
"The hate crime statute would only enhance [the sentence] one penalty level, and murder is already at the highest level," the prosecutor
--------------
Almost from the beginning, investigators suspected that Sellouk had been murdered because he was a Jew. The Anti-Defamation League also looked into the case to determine whether it was a hate crime.
Ultimately, Parnham said, such theories were "discounted." The defense lawyer said, "there was no evidence to substantiate the hate element."
St. Martin, however, was unwilling to rule out antisemitism as a possible factor in the killing. But, the prosecutor added, there may not have been enough evidence to prove it conclusively, and so he opted to try the case as a straight murder rather than a hate crime. "I'm not saying it was not a hate crime," St. Martin told the Forward. "I'm just saying that it would have been extremely difficult to prove that to a jury."
From the prosecution's point of view, it was a wise call. Even Parnham acknowledges that St. Martin's murder case against Alayed was nearly airtight. "The circumstances supporting the evidence in this case were overwhelming in favor of guilt," he said.
-----------------------
source: http://www.forward.com/issues/2004/04.01.23/news8.html