Prosecutor says race was not a factor in the Chris Lane killing

[Cali_Democrat]

The lead prosecutor in the murder case of an Australian man who was allegedly gunned down by three Oklahoma teens last week said that race was not a factor in the shooting death.

In a statement released Friday, Stephens County District Attorney Jason Hicks said that there wasn't enough evidence to pursue hate crime charges against the teens accused of murdering 22-year-old Christopher Lane, according to the Duncan Banner.

"The evidence is insufficient to establish that race was the primary motive in the murder of Christopher Lane," Hicks told the newspaper. Hicks also said such a charge would be redundant, since the two teens accused of killing Lane already face felony murder charges, and a hate crime charge is a misdemeanor in Oklahoma.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/26/christopher-lane-murder-race-not-motive_n_3816705.html?utm_hp_ref=crime

[Donald Ian Rankin]

1. The headline is not an accurate reflection of the article.

What the prosecutor actually said was "The evidence is insufficient to establish that race was the primary motive".

Extrapolating from there to "race was not a motive" removes not one but two massive qualifiers.

[Cali_Democrat]

2. The article title was too long for me to put as the subject

So I paraphrased the first sentence:

The lead prosecutor in the murder case of an Australian man who was allegedly gunned down by three Oklahoma teens last week said that race was not a factor in the shooting death.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. Do you think that he did?

My guess is that the remark that that quotation refers to is the "evidence is insufficient/primary motive" one, in which case that quotation is as wrong as the headline, but he may have said something else too.

[David Krout]

4. The prosecutor in the Zimmerman case said, “This case has never been about race"

The people who equate the Lane killing and the Trayvon killing will use Corey's words in order to paint as hypocrites those who tout the news about the no-race statement in the Lane trial: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/opinion/zimmerman-prosecutors-duck-the-race-issue.html?pagewanted=all

[Cali_Democrat]

5. I still cannot figure out why folks are trying to connect this case to the Zimmerman case

I really see no connection.

At all.

[David Krout]

6. They say one of the killers tweeted ""90% of white ppl (people) are nasty. #HATE THEM."

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/21/justice/australia-student-killed-oklahoma

They also argue that Zimmerman never made a similar statement regarding African Americans.

That is their reasoning.