It is clearly unequal justice for similar crimes.

After all, look at these two incidents.

Such a brutal crime was unusual, but not unheard of, in Laramie, Wyo. The victim had spent the evening drinking in a bar and accepted a ride from a stranger. It would be the victim's last. The victim would be assaulted and then left outside of town on the prairie on a cold night — to die. No one would find the victim until the next day. The attacker, who was on drugs, had left his child and the child's mother at home.

Hold it, you are probably thinking -- there is only one crime mentioned there.

Well, sort of.

You see, there are actually two crimes described there -- virtually identical -- that happened three months apart in Laramie, Wyoming. Everybody knows about the Matthew Shepard murder (a despicable act of evil by lowlife scum) -- but they don't know about the killing of Cindy Dixon three months later in a similar manner.

The punishment for the two men who killed Matthew Shepard was life in prison. The killing of Cindy Dixon netted her killer 4-to-9 years for manslaughter.

We know what the difference was -- one was a member of a designated protected class and the other wasn't. Even the added aggravating factor of the sexual assault of Cindy Dixon by her killer failed to get her justice equal to that given for the murder of Matthew Shepherd.

We are a nation that professes to believe in equality. Our Constitution mandates equal protection of the laws. But where is that equal protection when similar crimes result in disparate sentences because the death of one victim is deemed more heinous because of their race, religion, gender, or sexual identity? Why shouldn't the Cindy Dixons of the world get the same sort of consideration as the Matthew Shepherds?

Oh, and let's not forget that these two crimes show the evil of such disparate impact of the law in another way, too. Cindy Dixon's son will see his mother's rapist and killer walk out of prison a free man while that son, Russell Henderson, will do life for the remarkably similar murder of Matthew Shepherd because that murder is deemed a "hate crime". Tell me -- where is the justice there? Why should the law deem the life of Cindy Dixon to be any less valuable than that of Matthew Shepherd?

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