The Softer Side of Hate Crime?

When should a teenage killer be viewed with sympathy? The New
York Times broached that issue yesterday with a long profile of Jeffrey Conroy, recently
convicted in the case of the stabbing death of Ecuadorian immigrant
Marcelo Lucero. While press accounts have focused
on Conroy and his friends' belligerence and bigotry, the Times
attempted to put a human face on the teen by fleshing out his
background:

He turned 19 in January and it shows.
Though dressed in a green prisoner's uniform, he still has the face, the
demeanor and the vocabulary of a boyish teenager. ...

He said he feels sadness and sympathy for the Luceros, and
for Mr. Lucero's younger brother, Joselo Lucero, a presence in the
courtroom throughout the trial. "I would just look at him and then I
would look away," Mr. Conroy said. "I feel bad for him. I got a brother,
too. I couldn't imagine him dying."

So what should we make of Conroy's world, the nature or nurture that
produced such inexplicable violence?

Mr. Conroy's life was typical of what
it's like growing up in the predominantly white middle-class towns and
villages of eastern Long Island, but his experiences also had shades of
diversity. He listened to Jay-Z, Nas and other black hip-hop artists.
His half-sister from his father's previous marriage is part Puerto
Rican. One of his best friends is Turkish.

"I'm nothing like what the papers said about me," Mr. Conroy
said. "I'm not a white supremacist or anything like that. I'm not this
serious racist kid everyone thinks I am."

Whether or not Conroy is a "serious racist" may to some degree be a
semantic question. Or maybe this distinction between "serious" racism
and the not-so-serious kind grows out of something deeper at work in the
lives of kids like Conroy. The brutal murder of Marcelo Lucero tests
the limits of public compassion, especially when we're forced to wrestle
with the fact that these are youth--living in typical towns, leading
otherwise typical lives--charged with carrying out acts that seem
incomprehensible. Do we recognize the America in which a typical high
schooler listens to Nas and emblazons his skin with a swastika tattoo
"as a joke?"

Pull back the frame a little and we have a question of how young
people accused of crime are portrayed in the media. About two decades
ago, another crime in New York, the sensational Central Park jogger
case, put a different lens on a group of black youth, who were essentially tried by the media before they ever
faced a jury. Condemned as savage predators, they were doomed
from the start thanks to what we now know were botched confessions.
Not until 2002 would they finally have their convictions dismissed, well after the state had
robbed them of their youth. It was another case of the press vilifying
and distorting images of young people caught up in the criminal
justice system--deviants, "super-predators," the child-monsters who
represent an older generation's hidden neuroses and fears.

How much sympathy does Conroy deserve? Whatever your personal
disposition, remember that the same day his profile ran, there were legions
of other youth locked
up and banished, far outside the media spotlight, for whom the
question of compassion won't even be raised.