THEY'RE BONEHEADS, THEY BEAT A MAN BECAUSE HE WAS BLACK, BUT THE DA WON'T FILE HATE CRIME CHARGES

Back in 1999, Sean Hannity (before he was syndicated and more people started to hear him) complained that hate crime laws are laws against conservatives. That in mind, it is none too surprising that the conservative Harris County (Texas) District Attorney Pat Lykos is none too eager to charge the two pictured along with two others under hate crime statutes, despite even the police asking for her to do so. These two are known WP, and their little crew decided to attack a man simply because he was black. Who knows? Maybe it’s because in the case of these two, they have Hispanic girlfriends. If you were living in the Philly area back in the early 90s however, you know that didn’t mean a damned thing! And it doesn’t seem to be enough of a concern for Aryan Brotherhood, who they say they are down with. A little noise is being made about this, so we will keep you up to date on this. We do recall that when a reverse situation happened in NYC a few years back, where a group of blacks attacked a white person, conservatives raised hell when the DA there didn’t file hate crime charges. We need to do the same.

Houston Press

In a crime that hearkened back to the skinhead days of the early ’90s, or modern-day Dallas, four white men remain behind bars today charged with assaulting a black man at a downtown bus stop early Sunday morning. Police want the incident classed as a hate crime, but the Harris County District Attorney’s office has been reluctant to designate it as such.

The DA’s office released the following statement: “Hate crime enhancement decisions are made after a criminal charge is filed. After careful assessment of the facts and the evidence the trial prosecutor determines if bias or prejudice can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Arrested were 40-year-old Michael Joe McLaughlin and 32-year-old Brian Kerstetter, both of Cypress; 48-year-old homeless man Joseph Staggs; and 25-year-old Charles Allen Cannon of the Cloverleaf neighborhood, the closest thing modern-day Houston proper has to a white ghetto.

Police told Channel 26’s Isiah Carey that the men claimed to be white supremacists, and police have said that they are members of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang. Carey reported that they attacked the man because he was black. The victim was hospitalized after the attack.

Kerstetter and Cannon publicly claim to be “Peckerwoods” on Facebook, where they are friends. In prison slang, a Peckerwood is someone at least loosely affiliated with a white prison gang.

Kerstetter and McLaughlin have had ample opportunity to make such connections. Kerstetter’s criminal history dates back to a 1997 felony burglary conviction. Since then, he’s been convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence twice and also three more felonies, including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, robbery and, just last year, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.

McLaughlin’s rap sheet dates back to a DWI he got at the age of 19 in 1989. Since then he’s been convicted of auto theft, felony burglary of a vehicle, and robbery-bodily injury, for which he was sentenced to 13 years in TDC.

At the time of the incident, Cannon was freshly released from a 30-day stay in Harris County Jail after being convicted of assault after a nasty incident this March. According to a police report, Cannon and his wife Maria Guadalupe Cannon and two friends randomly assaulted a couple who were enjoying a sunny afternoon on the banks of the San Jacinto River. For kicking a man who was wrestling a friend of his after that friend had picked a fight, Cannon was sentenced to a month in jail. Maria Cannon, all 4’9″ and 90 pounds of her, is alleged to have taken a cellphone from a woman at gunpoint in the same incident and remains behind bars awaiting her day in court.

Perhaps the fact that Maria Cannon is Hispanic is one of the complicating factors in this case. Neither Kerstetter — who also once lived with a Hispanic woman (whom he is alleged to have beaten) — nor Cannon seem to have any qualms about crossing the brown-white divide. Both also have numerous Hispanic friends, and when Cannon assaulted the couple on the San Jacinto River, two of his accomplices were Latinos.

On the other hand, neither Kerstetter nor Cannon nor anyone else in their circle of friends seem to be friendly with any black people.

Or perhaps it’s a case of once-bitten twice shy for the DA’s office. In September 2009, in their first attempt at one of these cases, a grand jury declined the DA’s request to stack a hate crime enhancement on three white men accused of attacking a black ice cream vendor in northwest Harris County while calling him a “nigger.” In the end, one of those men walked free of any charges, a second was convicted of criminal mischief and received probation, and a third was sentenced to a year in Harris County Jail for simple assault.