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National Lavender Caucus
Green Party of the United States
Lavender Caucus correspondence to Georgia State Court Judge to criticize weak sentence of Savannah gay-bashing
Contributing Authors: Harry Rezzemini, Nan Garrett
Using our Standard Decision-making Procedure (available at http://www.lavendergreens.us/lavender_greens_024.htm), the Lavender Caucus has approved the correspondence below, to be sent on behalf of the Lavender Caucus to Georgia State Court Judge Ronald Ginsberg. This action was initiated by Georgia Equality (http://www.georgiaequality.org), the primary GLBTIQ advocacy group in Georgia, as a request to contact Judge Ginsberg and express dismay over his weak sentence for a man convicted of hate-motivated violence against a gay man in Savannah. The action-request and background are at this webpage: http://eqfed.org/geac/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=9623575 The proposal author will forward the correspondence below (as amended by discussion) to Judge Ginsberg on May 31, 2007. Copies will also be forwarded to the Georgia Green Party and to Georgia Equality.
Lavender Green Caucus of the Green Party of the United States
c/o Harry Rezzemini, Caucus Member
319 Fayetteville Rd.
Decatur, GA 30030-4804
Hon. Ronald Ginsberg, State Court Judge
Chatham County Court House
133 Montgomery Street
Savannah, GA 31401
RE: Inadequate Sentence for Charles Prickett.
Judge Ginsberg:
As the Lavender Green Caucus of the Green Party of the United States, our national mission includes advocacy of full human rights and equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer people not only within the Green Party but also within society at large. We are therefore profoundly dismayed by the lax sentence you gave to Charles Prickett for his conviction in the hate-motivated beating of Travis McClain.
Your honor, gayness is not necessarily a physically-obvious trait like race. Therefore, the perpetrators of anti-gay violence
frequently act against their perceptions of their victims' queerness. Therein lies the terror which gay-bashing inflicts on an entire community--and even beyond the lesbigaytrans community to anyone, really, who believes they might be misidentified as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex or queer. The national platform of the Green Party of the United States calls for "the aggressive prosecution of hate crimes" for precisely this reason, because hate crimes victimize everyone.
We Greens also generally call for restorative justice to replace retributive justice, for diverse and effective alternatives to
incarceration for non-violent offenders, and for the restoration of judicial discretion instead of mandatory sentencing. Nevertheless, to give Mr. Prickett credit for time served when he did not actually serve any time in prison for his brutal attack on Mr. McClain, and to waive all community service hours for Mr. Prickett, exceeds the bounds of even our compassion. We find your actions to be recklessly endangering the Savannah community by teaching Mr. Prickett and others that they can act out on their hatred of sexual minorities without serious consequences. We encourage you to reflect deeply on the violence and brutality you have sanctioned and to hear that your judgment is seriously in question as it pertains to this matter.
By inadequately punishing this violent hate crime, your sentence may perpetrate further violence, especially that which is motivated by hatred. That result is a failure of justice. We and your community are counting on you to do better in the future. Thankyou.
Signing for the Caucus, after due group process,
Harry Rezzemini.