On this date in 1976, Kentucky became the 49th state to ratify The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which abolished slavery 111 years after it was ratified nationally by the necessary three-fourths of the states.

Joseph Eli Bearden, 21, and William David Brown, Jr., 20, were charged on this date in 2007 for the death of Ryan Keith Skipper, a gay man who was stabbed 20 times. Robbed of his computer prior to his murder, Mr. Skipper's body was found on the side of a dirt road in Wahneta, Florida. Arrested two days prior to their being charged, Bearden and Brown, the police allege, killed Mr. Skipper inside his car on March 14, 2007, then attempted to clean the car which was found abandoned on a dock near Lake Pansy in Winter Haven, Florida. Brown is alleged to have told someone that Mr. Skipper was killed because he was gay and had made sexual advances toward Brown and Bearden. On February 27, 2009, Bearden, 23, was sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder, plus forty years for theft of a motor vehicle, accessory after the fact with a weapon, tampering with evidence and dealing in stolen property. On November 3, 2009, a jury convicted William Brown, Jr., of first-degree murder and robbery with a deadly weapon for killing and robbing Mr. Skipper, after having pleaded guilty in late October, 2009, to charges of arson and tampering with evidence. On December 1, 2009, Brown was sentenced to two life terms in prison.

On this date in 2008 in Brooklyn, New York, near the Fourth Avenue-Ninth Street subway station in Park Slope, an Israeli rabbinical assistant living in Wellesley, Massachusetts, was attacked by a group of Arab youths, one of whom is said to have stolen the victim’s yarmulke from his head and then to have run into traffic with it where he was struck by a car and broke his leg. That youth was arrested for his alleged role in the attack on Uria Ohana, 25, originally from Kfar Chabad, who was on his way to attend a lecture in Manhattan when the group of youths began kicking and punching Mr. Ohana and shouting “Allah akbar” (translated: “Allah is the greatest”) after he chased the youth who had grabbed his yarmulke. The incident is being investigated as a likely hate crime said a New York Police Department spokeswoman.

At a strip mall in Stockton, Missouri, on this date in 2009, arson destroyed three businesses—Movie Land, Pappi's Pizza and the Cig Shack—all owned by an openly gay man, Dan Thornton, 38, of El Dorado, Missouri, in what appeared to be an apparent hate crime. Anti-gay graffiti was found painted at the scene of the arson. The following day (March 19) Dina R. Larson, 39, and her son, Jacob T. Smith, 18, both of Stockton, were charged second-degree burglary and second-degree arson. Cedar County law enforcement then charged Thornton with second-degree arson and theft. He stands accused of planning the arsons, said to have been carried out by Larson and Smith, as a scheme to collect $900,000 in insurance money for his businesses which he had tried unsuccessfully to sell for about 18 months before the arson.

Just after midnight on this date in 2011 in Arroyo Grande (San Luis Obispo County), California, someone burned a stolen 11-foot tall cross in a vacant lot in the 100 block of South Elm Street, south of Grand Avenue, next to a home where a black 19-year-old woman and her Hispanic mother and her black father live. The cross was stolen on or around March 1, 2011, from Saint John's Lutheran Church in Arroyo Grande, said Arroyo Grande Police Chief Steve Annibali. Arrested and charged with arson, cross-burning, terrorism, and conspiracy to burn a cross—all with hate crime enhancements—were: a white man, Jason W. Kahn, 36, of Orcutt, California; and three transients: a half-Native American and half-Hispanic man, Jeremiah L. Hernandez, 32, originally from San Simeon, California; a white woman, Sara K. Matheny, 24, also originally from San Simeon; and, a Filipino-American man, William Soto, 20, who is a transient from Arroyo Grande. Jason Kahn—who sports a white supremacist tattoo on the back of his head and a skull wearing a Nazi helmet tattooed on his neck—was also charged with felony witness intimidation. The four were not charged with the theft of the cross from St. John's Lutheran Church. Hernandez, Kahn, Matheny, and Soto all pleaded Not Guilty. On September 7, 2011, San Luis Obispo County Superior Court Judge Jacquelyn Duffy barred the defendants from having copies of discovery information about their case; the prosecutor filed a motion stating that those involved in cooperating with the case could be at risk if the defendants were allowed to have copies of related police reports and other documents related to the case. The defendants appealed the judge's ruling to the California 2nd District Court of Appeal. On September 12, 2011, a San Luis Obispo County Superior Court judge ruled there was enough evidence to try Jeremiah "Smurf" Hernandez, Jason Kahn, 36, Sara Matheny and William Soto. All four were scheduled to be arraigned September 28, 2011, on arson, conspiracy and hate crime charges. The defendants tried to get their charges dismissed by arguing that cross-burning is protected free speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution; on October 24, 2011, Superior Court Judge Jacquelyn Duffy ruled that the hate-crime enhancements should not be dismissed, that cross-burning was not protected free speech. The trial for the four defendants is scheduled for February 2012.

In Olney, Maryland on this date in 2011, a Sri Lankan man, Nazir Ahmed, 81, was found shot to death execution style in his home on Olney Mill Road, and three days later a second South Asian immigrant man, Punyasara Wickremanayake Palkumbure Gedara, 41, originally from Pakistan, was shot to death in broad daylight as he was returning home from work just a mile-and-a-half from where Mr. Ahmed was killed. Police, who to our lastest knowledge, were not certain what the motives were to the murders were although they have not ruled out the possibility that the slayings were hate crimes. On March 21, 2011, the same day as the second murder, police arrested Rohan Jerome Goodlett, 35, who lived on the same block as Mr. Ahmed, with two counts of first-degree murder. Goodlett was initially held on two counts of possession of a controlled dangerous substance (marijuana) and two counts of possession of controlled dangerous substance paraphernalia while police conducted ballistics tests on the ammunition found at his home.

On this date in 2011 John Joe Thomas, 28, a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints priest from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania (Delaware County), told police he killed a mentally handicapped elderly white man perceived to be gay, Murray Joseph Seidman, 70, of Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, by striking his victim in the head ten times with a sock filled with rocks and batteries because, said Thomas, the Bible makes a reference to stoning homosexuals. According to the criminal complaint, Thomas, who is white, said to the police, "I stoned Murray with a rock in a sock," in early January 2011 after he said he received answers from prayer to do so. Divine inspiration, however, does not appear to have been the real or only motive for Mr. Seidman's slaying who was a friend of Thomas'. John Thomas was the executor and sole beneficiary of Mr. Seidman's will. Although the elderly man—who had worked in the laundry department at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital for many years—had been dead for five to ten days, on January 12, 2011, Thomas went to Mr. Seidman's apartment building and pretended to have discovered his dead body. Police found Thomas feigning being distraught in the hallway of the apartment building when the police arrived. Thomas, who claimed Mr. Seidman had made unwanted sexual advances toward him, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the Delaware County Courthouse on the date of his religiously-themed confession to the police; however, we have no information that Thomas was charged with a hate crime or that his slaying was actually a hate crime. Additionally, John J. Thomas, who once killed a cat because he thought “the devil was dwelling inside it,” was diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia; however, we have no information about what role, if any, his chronic psychiatric illness played in the slaying of Mr. Seidman. Frankly, given that Thomas feigned being distraught when police discovered Mr. Seidman's body, we doubt his psychiatric illness played any role in the homicide. This case serves as an example of how complicated it can be to determine whether or not a crime is a hate crime.