Misconceptions: A Hate Crime By Brice Johnson

A hate crime is defined by the LA County District Attorneys office as "A criminal act or attempted criminal act against an individual or group of individuals because of their actual or perceived race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, or disability. In 2013 Brice Johnson who is 19 years of age was sentenced in federal court to 183 months of imprisonment for kidnapping a young gay man after luring him to his home and brutally assaulting him because of his sexual orientation according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Johnson admitted in his plea documents that in the early morning of September 2, 2013 he connected with the victim who was identified as A.K. They met through a dating application called

Baumeister there are eight misconceptions regarding evil. The first misconception deals with the intentional inflicting of harm, in this case it has been proved to be an intentional way of inflicting harm on the victim, he was lured and then beaten and so this misconception doesn’t not apply to the case because Johnson truly wanted to inflict pain on the victim and he succeeded. The second misconception is that they inflict harm because they get pleasure form doing so, in this case it was never mentioned that the perpetrator was getting any pleasure from it almost seemed like the perpetrator just wanted to harm the victim and didn’t get pleasure form it and so this misconception does apply to this case because we might look at it from the perspective that the reason why he committed this crime was because he got pleasure from inflicting pain on an individual from a different sexual orientation. However nowhere was it mentioned that he got pleasure from It which might make it so that people believe that he got pleasure from committing the crime. Misconception three basically states that the victim is always both good and innocent. In this case nowhere do they mention any other reason why the victim was attacked other than his sexuality, it wasn’t mentioned that the individual was the one who solicited the sexual encounter so as I look at this case I can truly say that this crime the victim was truly innocent and good because he was lured and no other reason can show us why Johnson committed the crime like I’ve said before other than his sexual orientation. The Fourth misconception according to Baumeister is that the evil always resides in the other, enemy, outsider, and out-group. In this case the perpetrator is part of the majority group he is a heterosexual white man who attacked a gay male who is part of the minority group. When looking