Hating Crime and Punishment

Why Richard Machado?

That’s a question no one asks more often than Richard Machado himself, as he cools his heels in jail and awaits a jury verdict that could send him to federal prison for as long as 10 years. He’s had no business being locked up for the last eight months while awaiting trial, much less looking at a prison sentence of any length.

But in the often bizarre world of crime and punishment, that’s his lot in life. As a starting point, I would simply say that to be facing 10 years in prison, someone ought at least to have known he was committing a crime. It’s not clear that Machado did.

Back to that point later, but first, the details. Last September, Machado did a cowardly and disgusting thing. While killing time at UC Irvine, the 19-year-old college dropout logged onto a computer and sent out a message to several dozen Asian students who also were logged on.

There was nothing especially novel in the 11-sentence diatribe he spewed. It was the same old bigotry crap that every minority group has heard or felt since time immemorial. What took Machado’s vitriol to a different level, though, was his stated threat to personally “hunt down and kill” Asians on campus. He said he would make it his mission to “find and kill every one of you personally. OK? That’s how determined I am.” He signed the message, “Asian Hater.”

As I’m writing this, a federal jury is deliberating what to do about Machado, who was charged with violating the civil rights of the students who received his message. You might wonder why I show even the least sympathy for him. In truth, I’m taking a long time to write this because I keep asking myself the same question.

I don’t brush off his message as trivial. During his trial that just wrapped up, Machado described his e-mail message as a “joke” and said he was bored and just “wanted to see people’s reactions.” I can’t read his mind any more than the prosecutors or jurors can, so I don’t know if that was his state of mind or not.

But whether Machado thought so or not, I’m fairly sure that some recipients of the message were frightened. That alone is enough to make me condemn Machado.

In my mind, though, it’s an entirely different question as to whether he belongs in federal prison for what he did.

We know that Machado, 19 at the time, never followed up on his threat. Sending the e-mail from campus wasn’t exactly like operating in the dark and, in fact, he was fingered fairly quickly as the culprit. A few weeks after sending the message, Machado appeared before the UCI Asian-Pacific Student Assn. and apologized for what he did. One of the students said later he didn’t consider Machado “a malicious individual.”

In some worlds, that would have been the end of the affair.

Instead, the U.S. government chose to prosecute him. Although Machado sent out only the single electronic message, the government cited the number of people who received it and built the possible punishment to 10 years. I keep wondering why the government is so eager to expose him to a sentence that could effectively ruin his life.

The government has justified its case by saying Machado’s e-mail deprived the students who received it of their civil rights. Among those rights, they explained, is to attend a university free of intimidation.

Most fair-minded people would sympathize, but that leads to the one aspect of this bare-knuckles prosecution that troubles me. Government lawyers argued in court that recipients of Machado’s message were terrified. What it didn’t reveal, though, was that it knew that some other recipients weren’t terrified. Some, in fact, took the message in the way that Machado insists he sent it: more mindless prattle from the anonymity of cyberspace.

One student on Machado’s list told prosecutors that the message “did not affect me any more than an ordinary e-mail message. I thought it was a prank.” Another said the university is a place that “engenders and encourages free speech” and “didn’t think my well-being was personally threatened.”

That points out the vulnerability of such “hate” speech cases. In point of fact, some people are offended by the exact same language that rolls off another’s back. Is there any other category of felony besides so-called “hate crime” in which two people can be afflicted by an act and yet not even agree on whether they were both victims?

If the “victims” consider themselves such, should we prosecute Machado as the perpetrator?

I willingly run the risk of looking like an apologist for Machado. I’m not, but bring on your wrath. What we have here was a hurtful, vile act, deserving of condemnation, but which was followed by an in-person apology. No physical deeds followed up his words, and while it’s indisputable that words can wound, it gets very dicey in my mind when we start affixing lengthy prison terms to those words.

And then we start talking about a 10-year max? Is there even a single person who received Machado’s e-mail--and were among those truly frightened--who supports such a sentence?

Ten years? The government says it’s protecting us, but it’s got to be kidding.

Unfortunately for Richard Machado and his brush with bigoted speech, it isn’t.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com