Last year, a group of teenagers brutally murdered Luis Ramirez.
Indeed, as Ramirez lay unconscious at their feet, the teens yelled to a young woman by his side:
Tell your effin Mexican friends to get the eff out of Shenandoah or you’re going to be laying next to him!
Pretty horrific stuff.
Well, just last week an all-white jury found three of the teens “not guilty” of the serious charges of third-degree murder and ethnic intimidation. The ruling was greeted with cheers in the courtroom, and gasps of disbelief from Luis’ grieving fiancée and children.
Dave Neiwert, of Crooks and Liars, has reported:
As Avery Friedman argues persuasively in the video from CNN yesterday, this was a pretty clear-cut case of jury nullification: the weight of evidence against the accused was so powerful that it’s clear the all-white jury — like similar juries in the South during the Civil Rights struggle — was not going to convict two young white men of murdering a Mexican. Even if, as Friedman says, “the only reason he is dead is because he was Mexican.”
Prosecutors alleged that the teens baited the Ramirez into a fight with racial epithets, provoking an exchange of punches and kicks that ended with Ramirez convulsing in the street, foaming from the mouth. He died two days later in a hospital.
Piekarsky was accused of delivering a fatal kick to Ramirez’s head after he was knocked to the ground.
The Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund (MALDEF) has been working tirelessly with the family of Luis Ramirez since he was brutally attacked and murdered last year in Shenandoah, PA. MALDEF has been on the front lines in Pennsylvania and is leading the fight for justice in Washington, DC. Today we’re asking you to join with us and our friends at MALDEF in demanding justice for Luis and his family and that Washington take action on the disturbing rise in hate crimes committed against Latinos in the U.S.
Please sign the petition to the Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder today:
Ask that they prosecute Luis’s murder as a federal Hate Crime and that justice is served.