From the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Cheyenne Blanton, 17, (photo left) pleaded guilty to committing seven felonies against Ashley Clark, 19, who has a mental disability and was “humiliated, terrorized and tortured” for hours according to prosecutors.

Blanton could be sent to prison for 59 years and pay fines exceeding $100,000 for charges that include aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, conspiracy, felonious assault, vandalism, and kidnapping.

Prosecutors said Blanton and her boyfriend, Joseph Nagle, showed Ashley a knife and threatened to kill her. “They shaved her head and eyebrows, placed her in a cold shower and made her walk in the snow, soaking wet and barefoot in freezing temperatures,” said a prosecutor.

Sentencing was set for Sept. 5. Blanton’s boyfriend, Joseph Nagle, also faces charges

See earlier posts here and here.

(Cincinnati Enquirer photo

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

In a unanimous decision, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that struck down special protections for victims of hate crimes who are gay, female or disabled.

The court ruled that the legislature had unlawfully inserted the hate-crime language into an unrelated measure.

Gov. Edward G. Rendell, through a spokesman, urged the Legislature to reinstate the statute immediately. “Removing protections from any class of people does not seem to fit any categories of equal protection,” said Rendell’s press secretary, Chuck Ardo.

Related story: Michigan bill would extend hate crime protections to gay, disabled people

From the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Legislation has been introduced in Ohio that would expand the state’s hate crime law to provide protection to people with disabilities.

The measure was prompted by the attack last February of Ashley Clark, a teenager who has an intellectual disability and was born without limbs. Authorities say she was violently attacked in her rural home by two assailants who tied her up, beat her with a baseball bat, robbed her, cut off her hair and destroyed her prom dress.

The bill’s sponsor says that the attack would qualify as a hate crime if the proposed law were in place because Clark’s disability appears to be a key reason why she was targeted. Even if the bill were passed, it would have no bearing on the trial of the two suspects in the case.

Earlier post here.

Robert Shrimsley, writing in the Financial Times, says British plans for a disability hate crime law are unreasonable.

It is hard to resist the idea that this is really about preventing mockery. Because, other than comedians, and scriptwriters who put villains in wheelchairs, it is hard to think of the kinds of incitement envisaged by the new law.

… laws like this influence behaviour in insidious ways by creating an underlying fear of a new thought crime. In this atmosphere, the BBC cuts a Little Britain sketch for fear of being prosecuted, or a comedian is denied use of council facilities because in 1984 he made a joke about crutches. In a scriptwriters’ meeting producers wonder whether the villain couldn’t be more able-bodied …

What is lost is not the really outrageous bile that would never have made it anyway, but material that might give offence. So little by little this is an assault on freedom, because even the disabled do not have a constitutional right not to be offended. Or at least, they didn’t until now.

See earlier posts here and here.