Not Guilty

Damon Nance, 19, admitted it: “The cross was burned in order to tell black people to stay out of this neighborhood,” he told police in Peoria, Ill. He pleaded guilty to a hate crime and was sentenced to three years in prison. But Nance was freed from prison, his conviction nullified, because a judge has ruled that the law only applies when the victim of the crime is in a “protected class” defined in the hate crime law, and Nance’s target was white — a 16-year-old girl who was dating a black man. Prosecutors are thinking of filing new charges: criminal damage to property, a much lesser crime. (AP) ...Exactly what happens when you have a society based on law, but forgets about justice.