1st Amendment.
You don’t have to like the “speech”. I sure don’t.
But isn’t that the point of the 1st Amendment? Speech you agree with needs no protection.
Would he have gotten any punishment if it had been a statue of Jefferson Davis? If you say, no, that’s different, that exactly points to why the First Amendment protections take no sides. The First Amendment even protects the worst bigots, racists, all political persuasions, all religions, and on and on.
The judge didn’t have to determine this, he admitted (or at the very least did not contest) it when taking the plea. I still don’t think that deserves jail time, but it is a real crime.
I’ve thought about this some more, and I’m inclined to think that this is worthy of a misdemeanor, community service, and social opprobrium, but not of a felony.
No, we put people in jail to punish and rehabilitate them.
To rehabilitate or to punish has been a major issue in incarceration for well over a hundred years.
I have the impression that in the current situation rehabilitation has pretty much gone by the wayside.
I’m not sure if this is protected speech or not, but I do think it’s a pretty harsh sentence for the crime.
This just doesn’t seem appropriate. Supervised release, sure. Community service, fine. But prison time? That feels bizarre to me, especially since no one was injured and apparently, no property was damaged.
In my state, this is the sort of crime that a good lawyer would have negotiated for alternate punishment via the Bias and Bigotry rehab program, which has specific requirements that may include community service.
As Justice (I think) Kennedy said in the Virginia v Black cross burning case, when asked “Burning a flag or burning a cross, what’s the difference?” - his answer “A hundred years of history.”
"1st Amendment.
You don’t have to like the “speech”. I sure don’t.
But isn’t that the point of the 1st Amendment? Speech you agree with needs no protection."
This isn’t about free speech or agreeing with what someone said. If the kid said “blacks are inferior, they are X, Y and Z”, that is free speech.
But if the same kid at a rally of frat boys says the same thing, then advocates violence or other activities against blacks, or if he stood outside a black frat house with a group of buddies, and yelled nasty things at them, that can be considered threatening, like holding up nooses or burning a cross, it isn’t first amendment, it is harassment and intimidation which the law doesn’t allow.
Want proof? Stand outside your neighbor’s house and yell things at him, stand out there brandishing a baseball bat, or telling him what you want to do with his wife, and watch what happens.
Speech that is deemed harassing or intimidating is not covered by the first amendment, the same way if you say things and it incites people to do things, you are going to be charged with incitement to riot. If speech is threatening or harassing (like my example of you screaming at your neighbor like that), if the intent of the speech is to harass or intimidate other people, it is not covered, because there is a discernible harm. Your right to say something ends when it hurts someone else, when it is being used as a weapon. Expressing white supremacist speech is protected, expressing white supremacist speech by yelling at someone who is black, telling them what you want to do to them, is not.
In this case, if they had put a noose on the figure of Jefferson Davis, it likely would not have drawn the same charge, it would be considered vandalism or trespassing, because the image of a noose on Jefferson Davis has no implicit meaning. If whites had a long history of being lynched, if Jefferson Davis was someone who stood up to black oppression in a black majority society, if he as James Meredith did had risked his life, including being lynched, for doing what he did, it would be a crime…but given Jefferson Davis was a symbol of white supremacy, of the people who lynched rather than was lynched, it would hold no implications towards whites, especially if the kid who did it was white (if he were black, there potentially could be charges, if it was determined he reason for doing it was to show hate towards whites, which would be a long stretch, the rope alone wouldn’t be enough). I suspect the two who did this showed other signs of white supremacy, had demonstrated other hate, that tied into this. usually when you plead guilty they give out rather lenient expenses, especially if this were first offense, I suspect there is something more to the judge’s sentence…but the one thing, whatever the penalty, this had nothing to do with the first amendment, harassment and intimidation are not legal uses of free speech, never have been.
The same arguments were made when the Nazis wanted to march through Skokie, Illinois, which is a heavily Jewish community that had many Holocaust survivors living there at the time (1977). The city argued that to have Nazis march bearing swastikas would promote hatred and would inflict emotional harm on the Holocaust survivors.
As you may recall, those arguments failed and the courts said the city had to issue a permit to allow the march as offensive to the city’s residents as it was.
This article is by the same law professor, Professor Stone who said that this college kid should not have been charged.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-r-stone/remembering-the-nazis-in_b_188739.html
I don’t know why this student pled guilty. Perhaps he didn’t want a long drawn out court battle, perhaps he couldn’t afford a long drawn out court battle and couldn’t get an organization like the ACLU to take up his case.
They did not have the specific intent to intimidate. So free speech.
This noose guy has the specific intent to intimidate. So a crime.
We can’t start questioning about whether people are pleading to crimes they haven’t committed. We simply have to assume, that if someone admits to a crime in court under oath, they really did it.
It’s interesting. John Oliver had a piece on his September 13th program about the public defender’s offices and how overworked they are. Apparently, more than 90% of people plead guilty, often because they are urged to do so and told it will go easy for them. He profiled a few cases where innocent people pled guilty and the repercussions it had.
Some public defenders work 300 - 1000 cases a year and have less than 10 minutes to allocate to each case!
I’m not saying that’s what happened in this case, but it is a possibility unless he had his own representation.
“Harris pleaded guilty in June to a misdemeanor charge of using a threat of force to intimidate African-American students and employees.”
And you’re worried about his explaining this for a future job?
You will always find folks who believe saying or doing what you will, no matter the harm, is just fine. The challenge is to sort.
And I don’t find articles yet showing what level of prison or how long til he’s released.
I don’t think he was represented by a public offender.
Here’s a story about the arrest:
http://news.olemiss.edu/three-students-sought-for-questioning-in-investigation-of-james-meredith-statue-vandalism/
Thanks.
I still don’t understand how that march could have been construed as anything other than an attempt to intimidate and psychologically harm the Jewish residents of Skokie. Free speech, my youknowwhat! The courts can and do get it wrong. It was a vile and hateful thing to do, and they did it with a vile and hateful mindset, being…you know…Nazis and all… I’d like to see hooded members of the KKK try pulling a stunt like that in Compton, CA., and see what happens when the defecation hits the rotating blades.
If you study the cases of nooses left in various places on college campuses, the Ole Miss case is the only one that involved actual racists. I have not been able to find a single other case of race vandalism involving a noose that was not a hoax perpetrated either by someone wanting to create the false impression that they are a “victim” or by people wanting to make racism seem more “real.”. If we are going to send drunk, stupid white kids who do this to jail then we also ought to send all the race hoaxsters to jail.
There are multiple cases of stupid kids vandalizing synagogues who had to serve jail time, why shouldn’t Graeme Phillip Harris face jail time for trying to intimidate African American students and staff? Furthermore, would we tolerate Muslims vandalizing Christian statues if the they only received probation?
@frugaldoctor Do be aware that no damage was done to the statue. I can’t imagine a Muslim being prosecuted for merely laying a flag or even a noose on a Christian statue. Thanks for making my point that a racist double standard is being employed here.