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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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What other reason could there be to shoot someone else's 5-year-old child playing in the street?

He had no apparent motive except for a family member’s theory that Hinnant rode his bicycle through Sessoms’s yard.

A reasonable approach for suspecting that a child rode their bicycle through your yard is not executing them! And that's just someone else's theory. It doesn't even seem to be true.

On Wednesday, a neighbor told the court she saw Sessoms dash into Cannon Hinnant's yard and put a pistol to the boy’s head. The woman described seeing a “burst of flame” from the gun’s barrel before watching the 5-year-old fall to the ground. She testified that she phoned emergency dispatchers.

https://www.oxygen.com/crime-news/darius-sessoms-may-get-death-penalty-cannon-hinnant-death

There's no evidence of any bad blood between the families or anything. So the default assumption should be racial hatred.

No, as I said before, the default assumption should be that the shooter had some sort of mental issues, especially given that he committed the murder in broad daylight in front of witnesses. Again, as I said, that would certainly be the default assumption if they had both been of the same race. The fact that they were of different races does very little to change that default, especially given that even actual, dyed-in-the-wool racists are not in the practice of executing children on the street. Hell, even the Zebra killers did not shoot little children.

Firstly, racial hatred and mental issues are not mutually exclusive. We can be sure he doesn't have much planning skills. But nobody seems to have announced a motive and the guy himself didn't plead mental illness. If he says that his motive was mental illness then that would ameliorate his position somewhat - but he'd have to produce some kind of evidence that he's mentally ill. Whereas if his motive was racial hatred then admitting it would worsen his position. So if he's silent, then it means that his motive was racial hatred.

Firstly, racial hatred and mental issues are not mutually exclusive

I didn't say they were. The issue is not whether they are mutually exclusive, but rather what he default assumption should be.

the guy himself didn't plead mental illness.

Most mental issues, and most mental illnesses (note that I said the former) are not grounds for a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, which is an extremely narrow defense. In North Carolina, the defendant must show that he had some mental "disease or defect" which "so impaired the defendant’s mental capacity that the defendant either did not know the nature and quality of the act as the defendant was committing it, or, if the defendant did, that the defendant did not know that this act was wrong[.]" A guy can be a grade A sociopath, or schizophrenic, yet not be able to plead insanity.

If he says that his motive was mental illness then that would ameliorate his position somewhat - but he'd have to produce some kind of evidence that he's mentally ill. Whereas if his motive was racial hatred then admitting it would worsen his position.

Mental illness is not a motive. Regardless, this assumes it would ever come up. First of all, that would only come up at trial, but there was no trial; the defendant pleaded guilty (technically, he entered an Alford plea). And, even had there been a trial, the defendant would not have had cause to explain his motive. A defendant does not have to testify at trial, and rarely does so. Nor does the prosecution have to prove motive, because "'[m]otive is not an element of first-degree murder, nor is its absence a defense.'" State v. Carver, 725 SE 2d 902, 905 (NC: Court of Appeals 2012). Motive is admissible to show show that the defendant is likely the perpetrator, id, that was not an issue in this case, so evidence of motive might well have been irrelevant and inadmissible. it is certainly inadmissible if raised by the defendant, because it is not relevant to any claim that the defendant could make at trial. The only time it would be relevant would be at sentencing, But, again, the sentence here was imposed pursuant to a plea bargain.

So if he's silent, then it means that his motive was racial hatred.

Setting everything else aside this is terrible logic. For a start it's not either/or. It could be something else other than race or mental illness. Or he could be mentally ill but not be aware of it. It could be religious hatred, or the kid was annoying him with a bike bell and he snapped.

It COULD be racial hatred, but your logic does not hold together saying it must be.

I'll concede that the logic is flawed. But who has a religious hatred for 5-year old children? Who acts like a pitbull and snaps in such a way that they grab their gun, run into someone else's yard and shoot a 5-year-old in their head because of a bike bell? He has some kind of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde syndrome that switches on and makes him murder children? Are these really likely scenarios compared to racial hatred and low intelligence?

Racial hatred surely plays a major role even if there is some mental illness. The mentally ill are more likely to act on pre-existing motives. Maybe someone's mentally ill and people have been bullying him at school (which are probably interconnected) - it's unwise to say that it's just mental illness when he goes and shoots up the school. Or maybe somebody's been always been resentful of their family, becomes mentally ill and decides to kill them.

And there's plenty of black anti-white racial hatred. Just yesterday in Chicago we had a mob of blacks beating up a white woman: https://www.bizpacreview.com/2023/04/18/horrifying-new-video-shows-chicago-woman-beaten-in-doorway-by-wild-teen-mob-1351090/

Mental illness is individual but hatred can be and often is collective.

I did some research for the last time something like this happened where the races were reversed and the most similar incident happened in 1986. I suspect there won't be a 'This Day in History for Sessoms though: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/man-chased-to-his-death-in-howard-beach-hate-crime

23 children under 5 were killed in the Troubles.

It could be racial of course,but it could also be random. I have dealt with many terrible circumstances in the UK where people do horrible things to each other. Like kill over what seem like trivial annoyances. My point is you can't rule that out just because it doesn't make sense to you. You aren't wrong to speculate it could be racial. You are wrong with the info we seem to have to say it must have been. Thats all.