We don't know the sentence yet. I believe that's not until May. I would think he will get off with a fairly light sentence. He is a smart kid who did something terribly insensitive and wrong. I can't imagine a judge putting him away at taxpayer expense for an extended period. What would be gained by that? The point been made. He won't do this sort of thing again.
Note to self: filming my own room could result in hate crime charges.
- Thread starter pcp198
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We don't know the sentence yet. I believe that's not until May. I would think he will get off with a fairly light sentence. He is a smart kid who did something terribly insensitive and wrong. I can't imagine a judge putting him away at taxpayer expense for an extended period. What would be gained by that? The point been made. He won't do this sort of thing again.
I did. But the entire case is trumped up because it involved 1) a gay man, who 2) killed himself. It's a perfect nexus of two cause celeb issues (gays and bullying). There is no evidence the guy taping (his own room) was motivated out of "hate". Even if he was, the gay guy chose to kill himself. Obviously the suicide was emotionally unstable long before he went to university, so why should that be laid at the foot of guy responsible for taping what happened? Two wrongs don't make a right, but wheres the outrage from all the people who turn a blind eye when the NSA spies on surfing and webhabits, but go apeshit when some dude tapes what happens in his own room? I'm not defending the indian dude. Clearly, what he did was an infringement of his roommates privacy, but lets get some perspective here. 5 years is way too much. Cops beat the hell out citizens over traffic stops, and they get slapped with a paid vacation. Nobody cares when the Government does it. But if somebody spies on a gay man, it's a media circus.
"Winston looks down and realizes that he has written âDOWN WITH BIG BROTHERâ over and over again in his diary. He has committed thoughtcrimeâthe most unpardonable crimeâand he knows that the Thought Police will seize him sooner or later. Just then, there is a knock at the door."
George Orwell
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This was the most serious offense for which he was found guilty.
"Invasion of Privacy, under circumstances that caused Tyler Clementi to be intimidated, and considering the manner in which the offense was committed, Clementi reasonably believed that he was selected to be the target of the offense because of sexual orientation: GUILTY"
I do not think that statute will hold up to Supreme Court Scrutiny.
You may be allowed to enhance sentencing for bias...
but creating a new crime... Invasion of privacy plus?
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"Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference ⦠the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."
George Orwell
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This was the most serious offense for which he was found guilty.
"Invasion of Privacy, under circumstances that caused Tyler Clementi to be intimidated, and considering the manner in which the offense was committed, Clementi reasonably believed that he was selected to be the target of the offense because of sexual orientation: GUILTY"
I do not think that statute will hold up to Supreme Court Scrutiny.
You may be allowed to enhance sentencing for bias...
but creating a new crime... Invasion of privacy plus?
---
"Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference ⦠the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."
A friend of mine, a graduate student in humanities at Florida State, was very recently traveling to Chicago to attend a meeting of poets, in front of him in the airport security line was another young man of similar age wearing an "occupy..." tee shirt. My friend reports that this fellow was taken out of the line and subjected to intense scrutinizing by TSA personnel while he and the other passengers were allowed to proceed. Here, "scrutinizing" is my word. The word my friend used to describe the incident was "harassed".
It might be said that the near total loss of American's freedom delineated by the 1865 Constitution had its genesis in the Truman era when it was decided that rather than put a large number of citizens temporarily out of work following the conclusion of WWII the government would continue to maintain a standing army, and continue to spend, at that time, approximately two-thirds of its revenue on weapons manufacture and maintenance of the armed forces. This led to a need to justify such continued expenditure; the perceived communist threat was a convenient, ready made, and easily exaggerated justification. Ultimately this led to the creation of the unconstitutional agencies known as the CIA and NSA and culminated in the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act" of January 2009, which, when added to the "Patriot Act", completed the transformation of what was from 1865 to 2001 a Representative Republic in which citizens enjoyed relative, but dwindling, freedom, into the modern Police State the United States is today.
Those in the Truman administration surely could not imagine how destructive to the Republic their decision would prove to be. And Eisenhower too, who warned of the dangers of the military industrial complex, could not have foreseen the path that would follow from Republic to Police State. Not even Franklin, who foresaw that the government stemming from the 1787 Constitution, while likely to work well for the people for a period, could "...only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other," could have foreseen the diabolical path the United States has taken from Republic to Police State. A State in which many more are incarcerated, mostly for non-violent "crimes" than in any other industrialized nation. This result, of course, epitomizes the modern Police State.
These changes are most likely irreversible, short of revolution.
Well quite honestly your friend is an idiot for wearing the shirt same goes for someone wearing say an image of arafat would be subject to more security scrutiny.