Hate Crime IS Thought Crime: House Committee Advances Hate Crimes Prevention Act Of 2007

NBC6
Posted : 2007-04-27

WASHINGTON (AP) - A U-S House committee has advanced a hate crimes bill that drew support from a Houston-area Hispanic youth brutally attacked at a party last year.

The House Judiciary Committee voted 20-to-14 last night for a bill to allow the U-S attorney general to help local law enforcement investigate hate crimes.

Eighteen-year-old David Ritcheson testified last week on behalf of the bill sponsored by committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan.

Before then, he hadn't publicly linked his name to the attack at a party in the Houston suburb of Spring.

He was 17 when he was kicked, stripped, burned with cigarettes, beaten nearly lifeless and sodomized as his attackers yelled racial slurs at him.

His attackers were sentenced to 90 years and life in prison, even though they weren't prosecuted under state hate crimes laws.

Ritcheson told the panel that he was fortunate because local police had the resources and interest in vigorously prosecuting his attackers.

But he said other hate crime victims aren't as fortunate and need the federal hate crimes law.