Dallas Gay Leader Angry at Judge Over His Remarks on Murder Case

A gay rights leader warned Friday that outraged voters will remember a judge’s statement that he gave a lighter sentence to a murderer partly because his two victims were homosexuals.

“These two guys that got killed wouldn’t have been killed if they hadn’t been cruising the streets picking up teen-age boys,” State District Judge Jack Hampton told the Dallas Times Herald in an interview published Friday.

Hampton, 56, who has been on the bench eight years, said the homosexuality of the murder victims entered into his decision on Nov. 28 to give the 18-year-old killer a 30-year prison term instead of a maximum life sentence. The judge said he would have given a harsher sentence to Richard Lee Bednarski if his victims had been, for example, “a couple of housewives out shopping, not hurting anybody.”

Hampton expressed no reservations about his statements, the newspaper reported.

“Just spell my name right,” Hampton said. “If it makes anybody mad, they’ll forget it by 1990 (election year).”

Hampton did not return a telephone call from the Associated Press.

William Waybourn, president of the Dallas Gay Alliance, said he hopes Hampton’s remarks will prompt the public to work to remove him from the bench when he comes up for reelection.

“Judge Hampton said it himself: No one will remember this in 1990. But we will remember,” Waybourn said. “Being at the wrong place at the wrong time is just a tragedy,” Waybourn said of the killings. “I’m sorry for the families of the men who were killed. They don’t deserve this. And Hampton doesn’t deserve to be a judge.”

Robert Flowers, executive director of the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, declined to comment on Hampton’s statements and said the 11-member commission would investigate if a complaint were filed.

“A judge’s discretion is his or her own,” Flowers said. “And generally, we haven’t had too many occasions where the judge has spoken about what his thought process has been (in sentencing).”