NYC hate-crime trial: Jewish vigilante or too zealous prosecution?
Yitzhak Shuchat, a white member of a Jewish neighborhood watch group, faces trial for an assault on a black man in Crown Heights in New York. Hate crime or something else?
New York — Yitzhak Shuchat, a white member of a civilian patrol group, and Andrew Charles, the black son of a police officer, came face to face in 2008 in a neighborhood with a history of racial strife — that much is certain.
But six years later, the circumstances of the encounter in the
Crown Heights section of
Brooklyn remain murky, even as prosecutors pursue charges against 28-year-old Shuchat alleging he attacked Charles because of his race. Shuchat's supporters in the neighborhood's Orthodox Jewish community have reacted with dismay over what they call a hate crime investigation gone awry.
Authorities "took a minor incident and made it into a very serious situation," said state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who is Jewish. "This could have been resolved a long time ago. It makes absolutely no sense."
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-...us-prosecution
Prosecutorial Overreach and Black Political Pressure
