I have asked this question before: why is it somehow worse if someone beats you up because he hates you for being a member of some accredited victim group than if he beats you up because he wants to steal your wallet? From Robert Stacy McCain:
Detroit Police Say Anti-Semitism Not Motive in Synagogue Leader’s Murder
by Robert Stacy McCain | October 24, 2023
Very important update on the case:
Detroit police said investigators have looked into several people of interest in the killing of Samantha Woll, the president of a Detroit synagogue. Woll was found stabbed to death outside her home on Saturday morning.
In a press conference on Monday, Detroit Police Chief James White declined to unveil the connection between Woll and the people of interest, declaring a prime suspect cannot be named at the time.
“We have to be very, very cautious as to what information we share,” White said. “There are very intricate details about this case that, if revealed, could really damage what we’re trying to accomplish. There are facts that are known only to our suspect.”
White also clarified evidence in Woll’s death indicates her killing was not a result of antisemitism. Detroit police said Woll went to a wedding Friday night and left at about 12:30 a.m. on Saturday. Her body was found at about 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, and police say there was no forced entry at Woll’s home in Lafayette Park, located east of downtown Detroit.
“We believe there are no other groups or anyone else at risk,” White said. “We believe that this incident was not motivated by antisemitism and that this suspect acted alone.”
There’s more at the original.
With the evil attack by Hamas on Israel’s southern border, and a flare-up of anti-Semitic activity in the Unites States, as the Usual Suspects blame Israel for getting itself attacked, it was natural to worry about anti-Semitism being involved when a prominent Jewish leader is stabbed to death.
Me? What came to my mind was the stabbing death of Ryan Carson in Brooklyn, after his girlfriend and he were attacked by an agitated teenager for apparently no reason than rage and opportunity. It’s almost as though being out after midnight in America’s big cities isn’t the wisest idea.
The New York Times wrote of the victim:
Mr. Carson, a campaign manager for the New York Public Interest Research Group, was a community organizer and poet who also ran NO O.D. N.Y., a campaign to end drug overdose deaths.
That he was someone of at least some note, and that the killing was caught on video, made it more than a local story, but if Mr Carson was Jewish, I’ve not yet found any reference to such.
But I’ll ask the obvious, if nevertheless hard, question: is Miss Woll, the president of her synagogue, somehow deader than Mr Carson because she was Jewish? The similarities I see are the coincidence that they had both returned from weddings, and they were both stabbed to death. Actually, when I consider the third recent murder of someone of local note, that of Josh Kruger in Philadelphia, all of the murders were of white people. And all three are equally dead.
In Michigan, first degree murder, under §750.316, carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, but second degree murder, under §750.317, one not planned but an act in a moment of rage or something similar, carries a penalty of “imprisonment in the state prison for life, or any term of years, in the discretion of the court trying the same.”
When the crime is murder, so-called ‘hate crime’ enhancements don’t really mean that much: once the crime itself brings a sentence of life without parole, what difference does it make. But lesser crimes, those which carry a finite sentence of less than life, can have a difference in sentencing with a hate crime enhancement, and that’s where I have a problem; why is it worse because the assailant hated blacks or Jews or homosexuals than it is for any other reason? A victim is still a victim, still suffers the same loss or injury, and we should not treat them differently.