Evil is evil whether it is a designated "hate crime" or not.

Amy RobinsonNotice of Robert Neville, Jr.’s execution came last week in The Dallas Morning News Metro Section, Neville being one of two convicted in the February, 1998 torture-slaying of 19-year-old Amy Robinson.

You may remember reading the original news account. On that 15^th day of February, Neville and co-defendant Michael Wayne Hall intercepted the mentally challenged girl as she rode her bike to work, put her in their pickup – bike and all – and drove out to a secluded field in Grand Prairie for some target practice. Shooting her repeatedly with a pellet gun, they laughed as she begged for her life. Then shot her dead with a .22 caliber rifle.

You let the dispassionate facts sink in, then contemplate for a while. Likely Amy thought nothing of Hall and Neville’s turning up – they had worked together at Kroger’s. The goons probably offered her a lift. You imagine that Amy may have even felt pleased by the gesture. In your solitude, you enter the anguish. That’s all you can give this girl.

You keep looking for something that might shed light on what could bring a human being to such a pass that he will taunt, maim and kill for amusement. It was mentioned that Hall was a convicted felon who had just been fired from his job, but you dismiss that as insufficient. Too small. Come to think of it, any category of human emotion-- hate, vengefulness, lust, jealousy—strikes you as insufficient on its own to propel such an act of brutality. After all, brutes aren’t the only ones who give in to violent fits: We all get laid off, jilted, go broke. To grasp this level of depravity, you have to delve deeper: You have to be willing to acknowledge the existence of evil.

1998 turned out to be a banner year for torture slayings. That June, James Byrd, Jr. was dragged to death behind a pickup in Jasper, Texas; in October, Matthew Shepard was found beaten and tied to a post in Laramie, Wyoming, where he bled to death.

Jasper, you’ll recall, exploded in a racial conflagration, Byrd having been targeted for atrocity by three, fun-loving, twenty-something white supremacists. Shepard was singled out because he was gay.

What happened was that the emphasis in the Byrd and Shepard cases quickly moved from their distinct set of horrific particulars to sacred mythologies to be leveraged on behalf of the diversity racket. If only we were more tolerant of each other’s differences, went the conventional wisdom, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. A clamor arose for the creation of hate crimes legislation that would strengthen penalties for crimes committed against protected consitutencies. The NAACP demanded that the U.S. Senate craft a Resolution of Apology to atone for racially-motivated lynchings that occurred in the pre-civil rights era. Then there was the Nightline broadcast. Frontline. The TV movie starring Jon Voigt and Louis Gossett, Jr. The book by reporter Joyce King. The J. Erik Jonsson Central Library exhibit of portraits of those who tried to keep the peace in Jasper, and photographs of the notorious chair and chains.

Meanwhile, the Matthew Shepard story was dramatized in "The Laramie Project" by New York’s Tectonic Theatre Project. The Matthew Shepard Foundation Website went up with links to Lambda Legal, P-FLAG, and the Anti-Defamation League, among others. You can book Judy or Dennis Shepard – Matthew’s parents – for speaking engagements. Purchase purple "Erase Hate" wristbands, three for $10.

What about Amy?

Other than the occasional update in connection with the trial, the Amy Robinson case faded into obscurity. For me, that was enough to expose the speciousness of hate crimes legislation: As if you could come up with a diversity multiplier to calculate the awfulness of a crime. So…what, you get more points for your homicide if you’re black or gay? You’ve got to wonder how that went down in the Robinson household.

I can understand the desire to address the unique sense of injury felt by a collective when one of its own gets singled out for assault simply because he’s a member. The problem with that is it sends a message to those of us outside the collective that "You couldn’t possibly understand."

Clearly there are deeds so vile that they constitute an affront to civilized society and demand commensurate punishment: I just don’t think that creating a special class of victims represents a step in the right direction. It’s just plain delusional to suppose that mankind will cease committing atrocities if only we would implement a national program of sensitivity training.

I’d like to think the reason that the James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Bill failed to find footing in Texas back in ‘01 was in part because its proponents overlooked the fact that we’re no longer living in an America in which three white guys can chain a black man to a chair, drag him to his death behind a pickup, and get away with it.

It took a mostly white jury 2 ½ hours to send John William King to death row in 1999. His accomplice Lawrence Brewer was sentenced to death by an all-white jury the same year.

This is what’s required of us: that we assert the will to confront evil and pluck it from our midst. So when news comes that the first of this lot has been put down, I find I’m okay with that.

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