Origin
The Act is named after Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Shepard was a student who was tortured and murdered in 1998 near Laramie, Wyoming, the attack was widely reported by mainstream media due to his being gay and the trial employed a gay panic defense. Byrd was an African-American man who was tied to a truck by two white supremacists, dragged from it, and decapitated in Jasper, Texas in 1998. Shepard's murderers were given life sentences—in large part because his parents sought mercy for his killers. Two of Byrd's murderers were sentenced to death, while the third was sentenced to life in prison. All the convictions were obtained without the assistance of hate crimes laws, since none was applicable at the time.
The murders and subsequent trials brought national and international attention to the desire to amend U.S. hate crime legislation at both the state and federal levels. Wyoming hate crime laws at the time did not recognize homosexuals as a suspect class, whereas Texas had no hate crimes law at all.
Supporters of an expansion of hate crime laws argued that hate crimes are worse than regular crimes without a prejudiced motivation from a psychological perspective. The time it takes to mentally recover from a hate crime is almost twice as long than it is for a regular crime and LGBT people often feel as if they are being punished for their sexuality which leads to higher incidence of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. They also cited the response to Shepard's murder by many LGBT people, especially youth, who reported going back into the closet, fearing for their safety, experiencing a strong sense of self-loathing, and upset that the same thing could happen to them because of their sexual orientation.
Read more about this topic: Matthew Shepard And James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act
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