The Laramie Project 10 Years Later is an expanded version of the stage play about the murder of Matthew Shepard, and includes an epilogue based on interviews with one of Shepard’s killers, Aaron McKinney.
Pierotti logged more than 10 hours of interviews with McKinney, but failed to get the killer to express any remorse.
“As far as Matt is concerned, I don’t have any remorse,” McKinney is quoted as saying in the script.
When pressed again on the question of regret, McKinney said he was sorry for Shepard’s family and that his life had taken such a bad turn.
“Yeah, I got remorse. But probably not the way people want me to,” McKinney said. “I got remorse that I didn’t live the way my dad taught me to live.”
CBC: Laramie Project adds killer’s words as epilogue
I don’t think that hate crimes should be punished any more or less harshly than other murders. But this should put an end to the discussion over whether Shepard’s murder was a hate crime.
(Thanks Josh)
October 6, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Having work on the issue a fair amount, I can say that Hate Crimes legislation is not ENTIRELY about stiffer penalties.
Any act which is supposed to be viewed as a threat against a minority community, which unless you happen to be LGBT is already a hate crime, becomes automatically a FEDERAL crime and so can be pursued by FBI/Justice Dept. staff as opposed to local law enforcement.
You can imagine how this would end up with more such cases ending in an arrest given the relative power of the Federal Security Apparatus.