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Loading ...Judge reduces sentence for gay man’s killer
03.17.2009 4:16pm EDT
(Denver, Colorado) A Colorado man sentenced to 22 years in prison for the death of a gay man has had that sentence reduced by 10 years.
Jason Fisk pleaded guilty in 2006 to charges of manslaughter and robbery in the death of Kevin Hale in 2005. He originally was charged with murder.Fiske’s partner in the killing, Adam Hernandez, 21, is serving an year prison term for manslaughter and theft. He, too, was originally charged with murder.
Fiske received a longer sentence because he was deemed to have been the ringleader in the killing. His attorney’s appealed the sentence arguing the trial court violated his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, resulting in an excessive sentence.
The appeals court agreed, ordering the trial judge to resentence him.
Montrose County District Judge James Schum sentenced Fisk to six years on each charge, to be served consecutively. That leaves Fiske with a 12 year sentence, less the three years he already has served.
Hale’s body was found in a Montrose park in July 2005, weeks after he had gone to police to complain he had been threatened because he was gay.
Hernandez, Fiske and Hale had been at a bar. Hernandez told investigators he wanted to beat up Hale because Hale had made sexual advances toward him, authorities said at the time.
The day after the slaying, Fiske told police he placed Hale in a chokehold while breaking up a fight between the other two men. The arrest affidavit said Fiske told police he thought Hale was unconscious when they left him in the park.
An autopsy showed Hale died of strangulation, and that he had methamphetamine and epilepsy medication in his system.
LGBT groups called for hate-crime charges, but prosecutors declined to do so, saying robbery was the real motive for the killing. Hale’s wallet, containing $8, was missing when the body was discovered.
I guess the lesson from this is that you can murder anyone in a hate crime, but it isn’t a hate crime if you take the person’s wallet/money…its a robbery instead. This doesn’t just apply to gay people either, but I bet its more common with gay people now days than any other protected group. Is this the precedent that Colorado’s judiciary system wants to set? I would hope not.
we must fight for stronger laws to protect our people no child deserves the right to be murder for who they are this was someones son and their brother and friend for if we let this happens justice will not prevail!!!
Tiger . . . you can declare war until you’re blue in the face. It is meaningless. You do not speak for the gay community. Indeed, on nearly any issue it is almost impossible to define or identify a ‘gay community’. That is too bad but it is the truth.
But if you decide to go begin killing the straight community, I’m pretty sure you won’t have the gay community singing your praises. Rather they will be, for the most part, declaring your ignorance and hatred.
You’ll have your shadow backing you. And you will find that hatred, regardless of its source, is counterproductive at best and (usually) destructive to its own desires.
Neil
fr the article:
>…LGBT groups called for hate-crime charges, but prosecutors declined to do so, saying robbery was the real motive for the killing. Hale’s wallet, containing $8, was missing when the body was discovered.<
It’s obvious that the prosecutors in this case need to be removed from office, as this is CLEARLY a hate crime and needs to be heard as such.
It’s insane that a wink and a smile could be a positive defense and rationalisation for strangling a person to death. Sexual advances as a postiive defense must be outlawed. The Gay community of Colorado should be up in arms and Lambda legal defense should be ready to sue for civil rights violations. Why did this not make headlines at cnn????
Im taking this quite personal because I was a gay bash victim. These bastards got away with murder.
We have every right to “Hate” those who hurt, mame, and kill us but the “eye for an eye” will not further our cause. We CAN NOT resort to that same kind of behavior. We MUST NOT turn into the kind of people they are. We are better than that. There are more peaceful ways to make our point and history will tell the tale of our struggles as a fair and just group in the end.
James Withers Said: “Hate to bust your bubble General Tiger T, but just because you call it a war does not make it so.”
Hate to burst your bubble James, but it is their own words and actions that make it what it is, not my words. I just call it like I see it. By your logic, every soldier who fought in Vietnam is a murderer because that was never declared a “war”. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck….
TigerTzu,
Hate to bust your bubble General Tiger T, but just because you call it a war does not make it so. But let us know how your war tactics work, okay?
James, in a war, it is not called murder
TigerTzu,
“Things wont change until we start killing them in return.”
Wait a minute. You are now extolling murder as an effective political strategy?
Sincerely,
James
Things wont change until we start killing them in return. Maybe some point in the future enough GLBT people will wake up and realize that this is a war and that means death and violence. It is a shame we are only on the receiving end of that violence.
If the victim was Black and someone called him the “N” word before they killed him, I’d bet anything that the vile pig(s) who murdered him would be up on federal charges as well.
You can also bet that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would lead thousands of African Americans in protest marches at the court house, and around the country, if the perpetrator got a lesser sentence. Maybe even riots would occur.
Furthermore, the national news media would make it the lead story for days — if not weeks.
The poster “Frankly” is right. We are treated like road-kill.
…And still, we let them get away with it by our silence.
Matthew Shepard’s death which woke up America and the GLBT community for a short time to the painful reality of our unrelenting persecution and murder in this vile nation of bigots seems to have become nothing more that an anomaly of the past. And yet there are tens of thousands of us in the GLBT community who are still murdered and beaten every day, and millions more who are denied basic human rights — and we do nothing. Where is the outrage?
In June (with an expected ruling, probably against us, in the Prop 8 case in California) please take to the streets that Gay Pride Month and rage against this injustice in America. Put a moratorium on partying for once. Protest, protest, PROTEST!!! Do this daily, unswervingly, and never stop, until enough decent people who are still unaware of us, hear are cries for justice — not just in America, but around the world.
If you do nothing, then nothing is what you will always get — and nothing will ever change.
© “Bud” E. Lewis Evans
PS – You can reach my blog by clicking on my name in the blue header. Thanks!
You CANNOT trust haterosexual males. The haterosexual males in the legal system will always downplay any gay assault or killing as a robbery and charge the haterosexual killers with either second-degree murder or manslaughter even if the murder was planned. And forget about hate crime charges.
Let me see…. The man admitted that he wanted to beat up the man because of sexual advances. The prosecutors decided that the real motive was robbery.
It’s amazing these men will be on the streets before they are very old.
Once again, where is our Leadership, they refuse to mobilize nationally. And what happens without a national movement? We get treated like roadkill by the Justice system. THey have nothing to fear from our community because we don’t give them something to fear.