ARA South Bend
Online Newsletter
Since it got to be so expensive to put out our newsletter, we're going to have to go with this format until there is more money. I put it in basic type and black on white so feel free to print out any part you want.
McKinney Found guilty in Shephard attack
Laramie, Wyoming - 11/3/99
A drug-dealing roofer was guilty today of murder in the beating of gay college student Matthew Shepard, a death so brutal that it set off hate-crime legislation campaigns across the nation. The verdict of two counts of felony murder makes Aaron McKinney eligible for the death penalty. He was also convicted of second-degree murder, aggravated robbery and kidnapping. The jury of seven men and five women returned the verdicts after about 10 hours of deliberation. The sentencing phase, in which jurors will consider whether to sentence McKinney to death, was set to begin Thursday. As the jury prepared to announce its verdict, McKinney, 22, stood next to his two attorneys, looking impassive, arms crossed in front of him. When the first verdict was read - guilty of kidnapping - his arms dropped to his sides. His father, William, looked straight ahead with no emotion.
Shepard, 21, a University of Wyoming freshman majoring in political science, met McKinney and Russell Henderson at a Laramie bar on Oct. 6, 1998. Prosecutors said McKinney and Russell Henderson lured Shepard from the bar and drove him to a remote spot on the prairie, where they tied him to a wooden rail fence, robbed him of 420 and pistol-whipped him into a coma. Eighteen hours later, Shepard, bruised and bleeding, was found still lashed to the fence. he died five days later at a Fort Collins, Colorado hospital without regaining consciousness. Authorities said robbery was the primary motive but that the slightly-built Shepard also was singled out because he was gay. McKinney and Henderson were charged with kidnapping, robbery and murder. Henderson pleaded guilty in April to kidnapping and murder, and is serving two life sentences.
In closing arguments Tuesday, prosecutor Cal Rerucha paused for 60 seconds to let the jury reflect in silence on the beating inflicted on Shepard. "Think what 60 seconds was to Matthew Shepard," Rerucha said. "It's a short time if you're eating an ice cream cone. It's a long time if you're descending into hell not knowing what fate will meet you there." Defense attorneys argued that McKinney, in a drug-induced rage, lost control after Shepard made an unwanted sexual advance. They were barred from using a "gay panic" strategy, which is based on the theory that a person with latent gay tendencies will have an uncontrollable, violent reaction when propositioned by a homosexual. District judge Barton Voigt ruled that the strategy was akin to temporary insanity or a diminished-capacity defense - both prohibited under Wyoming law. The ruling essentially let the defense argue the beating was a crime of passion but not present the theory that the passion was caused by a specific mental condition.
In his closing argument, public defender Dion Custis told the jury that McKinney was in an "emotional rage." "(He) is not a cold-blooded murderer, ladies and gentlemen, he reacted," Custis said. "There was no thought process."
Shepard's death sparked vigils denouncing the murder as a hate crime and renewed efforts for laws protecting homosexuals from such crimes. In Wyoming's legislature, however, proposed hate-crime bills failed. Opponents complained that gays and other protected groups would get special treatment and argued that existing laws are enough. President Clinton's push to expand federal hate crime legislation to protect gays also fell short. Shepard went to high school in Switzerland, spoke three languages and had traveled the world before returning to his native Wyoming to attend the university. He was raised in a close, loving family made comfortable by his father's job in a multinational oil company. McKinney and his friend Henderson came from the poor side of town. Both were from broken homes and as teen-agers had had run-ins with the law. They lived in trailer parks and scratched out a living working at fast-food restaurants and fixing roofs.......Associated Press
Hate Crimes Prevention Act passes Senate
On Thursday, July 22, the Hate Crimes Prevention Act passed as an amendment to S. 1217, the Commerce, Justice, State appropriations bill. The final fate of this legislation is not yet certain, however, since the House of Representatives appropriations bill does not yet include a similar amendment.
"This is a huge victory for all families nationwide," said Paul Beeman, the president of the national group, PFLAG. The Hate Crimes Prevention Act strengthens federal hate crime law to assist local prosecutions, and where appropriate, investigate and prosecute cases in which violence occurs because of the victims sexual orientation, disability or gender. Beeman urged House members to follow the Senate's important lead and to speak out in support of the bill, known as HCPA, during upcoming hearings.
Beeman also lauded the Senate leadership, particularly the staff of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), as well as all members of the broad-based coalition of groups representing people of faith, people of color, women and people with disabilities, which worked together on the bill.
HCPA now has the support of the US Senate along with President Clinton, the Department of Justice and a bi-partisan group of lead sponsors in Congress......courtesy PFLAG
Racist Killing Spree
7/19/99
Before last week, it was hard to imagine Matthew Hale ever amounting to much. Hale, 27, runs a racist hate group he grandly named the World Church of the Creator. But even as one of the largest such organizations in the nation, WCOTC has at most a few thousand dues-paying $35-a-year members, many of whom were recruited on the Internet and have never so much as gathered in a beer hall. The group's headquarters is Hale's bedroom in his dad's house in East Peoria, Ill. It measures members' success by the number of racist leaflets they can distribute in a month, which is absurd to those of us who trash anything left under windshield wipers. A law school graduate, Hale can't even practice his profession: a state bar panel said in December that his racism makes him morally unfit. Should we really fear people like this, guys twisted enough to make a religion of their own race - and dorky enough to live with their parents?
Unfortunately, last week the answer seemed to be yes. Benjamin Smith, a 21-year-old WCOTC sympathizer who had been so close to Hale he moved to Peopria to be near him, recently became convinced that the group's goal of white victory in the coming racial holy war couldn't be achieved through propaganda alone. Setting off July 2 from the Chicago suburbs where he ws raised, Smith shot 11 Asian Americans, blacks and Jews, killing two, before committing suicide July 4 in southern Illinois.
To be sure, organized hate groups have not achieved great financial or political power; in fact, the old Aryan Nation-style groups are struggling. But authorities believe violence motivated by hate is increasing, in part because hate groups now wield powerful new tools, including the Internet and the arts of media management, to attract a different breed of racist. More college kids and suburban residents have joined, and WCOTC is even making direct appels to women. Also drawn to the fiery words are loners who feel profoundly disaffected by societal change, young men who are already on the edge of violence.
The blow-dried Hale doesn't like to discuss these violence-prone members. He insisted last week that Smith didn't represent WCOTC. "We don't condone these actions," he told TIME. But neither would he condemn the murders. Instead, WCOTC staged a live Internet chat to keep up last week's publicity.
Lawyers for antihate groups are considering lawsuits against WCOTC on behalf of Smith's victims, one of whom filed his own suit on Friday. The broader suits would probably charge that Hale and his group's rhetoric were responsible for Smith's shooting spree. Proving anything will be difficult, but antihate lawyers hope such a lawsuit might bankrupt the group. In 1994 the Southern Povery Law Center won a $1 million fine against the WCOTC's previous incarnation - called simply the Church of the Creater, a group founded by a former Florida legislator - because of its ties to violence. In the 90's alone, at least 10 of its members pleaded guilty to or were convicted of racially motivated crimes. Before Hale revived the group in 1996, it was nearly dead and gone because of faltering leadership and the successful lawsuit.
Even today, WCOTC's websites contain plenty of incendiary language. One of it "16 Commandements" is to "destroy and banish all Jewish thought and influence." Hale has written of the need for a "total solution to the ills of this planet," echoing Hitler's call for a "final solution." That's just the sort of nonsense that could provoke a troubled loser looking for someone to blame for his plight. "The sophisticated bigots know they're not going to have a mass movement," says Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an antihate group in Los Angeles. "But with the help of the Internet they can recruit individuals who are prepared to act out.".....J. Cloud, TIME magazine
Teachers to integrate African cultures into curriculum
Students will get a bigger dose of African and African-American history, art, artifacts and other topics during the 1999-2000 school year.
Teachers in South Bend, Mishawaka and various parts of Michigan have been immersed in a year-long study in an effort to integrate relationships between ancestral African and contemporary African-American cultures into the curriculum where relevant.
With the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, 30 teachers will use the resources of the Snite Museum of Art, the South Bend Regional Museum of Art and the Northern Indiana Center for History to explore customs, culture and the significance of art.
Mary Jo Ogren, a US history teacher at Benton Harbor High School, believes the program will not only give students insight into the African culture but help them develop a better appreciation and understanding for art. Another objective of the program is to help students feel more comfortable in a museum setting and begin inquiring about the stories behind artwork.
Many teachers who are participating in the summer workshop programs to prepare for the fall intend to expand Black History month throughout the entire school year.....SB Trib
