U of Colo SAE House Firebombed
 

U. of Colo. frat house firebombed; brawl follows

BOULDER, Colo. — Someone tossed a firebomb into a fraternity house about a block from the University of Colorado, setting off a brawl in a nearby alley that sent one man to the hospital, police said.

...Huntley said it was probably not a hate crime, but more likely stemmed from a feud between the fraternity and residents of a nearby apartment or with another fraternity. No arrests had been made, and police had no individual suspects.

A jug of charcoal starter fluid with a burning firecracker attached was thrown into the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house through an open door about 2:15 a.m., Huntley said. Someone inside pushed it back out with a wet mop.

"We're very, very fortunate that nobody was hurt," she said.

(Sorry, I can't find the page I copied to post the entire link:rolleyes: )

OMG!!!!! That's insane!

Good job to the person who got it out of the house!

Someone explain to me what this 'hate crime' aspect is all about?

I think the following is the article AGDLynn quoted from:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i...EXwSgD93JHN1G0

Here's another, slightly different one:
http://media.www.thecampuspress.com/...-3469667.shtml

.
And a slightly earlier one:
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008...ht-at-cu-frat/

This seems like a highly serious incident. Firebombing's no joke.

I found it but your links are okay!

That is so scary and awful! I'm glad no one was hurt.

If I were a prosecutor . . .
 

This is arson. If somebody dies it is a homicide, most likely murder. If I were a prosecutor I would charge this not only as arson, but as attempted murder, one count per resident.

But I am merely a probate attorney.

Felony-murder.

That is correct, in a perfect world the felony murder rule would apply. But see also a Texas case, I believe it is People vs. Taylor, a 1986 or so case involving arson and death. They didn't apply the FMR.

A person can make a hate crime against greeks. Hate crimes happen against members of a social group. Most of the time you think of race, religion, sexuality, or maybe gender. But if something hurt me simply for being greek I would consider it a hate crime.

I know it's shoddy legal research on my part, so please correct me if this is wrong. I checked Wikipedia for a definition of hate crimes laws, and while the definition doesn't cite to a particular statute, it defines a hate crime as the following: "A hate crime is a criminal offense committed against a person or property motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender's bias against a racial group, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, or disability."

I don't see social group in there, and would have a hard time interpreting the hate crimes concept so broadly unless there was specific language somewhere alluding that sort of protection.

Am. Jur. says:
So unless Colorado's hate crime statute is different than the norm I tend to agree, I don't see the basis for considering this a hate crime.

No, from what I can see Colorado's definition of a hate crime does not involve social groups. I am getting this information from here : http://www.cuah.org/what.htm.
Also I think it is important to mention that hate crime or not this is a horrible thing that happened and I am so glad no one got hurt from the firebomb.Does anybody know if further actions are being taken to keep the fraternity safe, besides the disciplinary actions?

Just because you'd consider it a hate crime doesn't mean that the law would consider it a hate crime.

I think everyone else is correct. Colorado law appears to include the following under "bias-motivated crimes" (hate crimes): "race, color, ancestry, religion, national origin, physical or mental disability, or sexual orientation." Colo. Rev. Stat. § 18-9-121.

I don't know of any hate crime statute that extends as far as "social groups."

This article says that some security personnel have been hired to guard the SAE house, at least for a few days:

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008...ht-at-cu-frat/

Something similar to this happened to the SAE house at my university back when I was still a student (wow... this was now 11 years ago). A guy was upset that his ex-girlfriend was now seeing an SAE and decided to get his revenge by setting fire to the SAE house. It was late at night and one person was sleeping on the upstairs (2nd story) floor inside the house at the time. Back then the SAE house was next door to Kappa Sigma. Two Kappa Sigs saw the smoke and ran over to see what was happening. When they knocked on the door they woke up the brother inside, who panicked and didn't know how to get out (the bottom floor of the house was ablaze).

These two guys (guys I knew actually... one was dating a girl at the same time I was seeing her, which is another story entirely) told the SAE to jump, which he finally did after some debating. He was okay, but the house was charred. It wouldn't be repaired for almost a year.

The SAEs knew who it was who set fire to the house but had no proof to go on. To this day I don't know if that guy was punished at all. Unfortunately both SAE and Kappa Sig were kicked off campus in the following year -- SAE after a rape incident at a party in Albuquerque, NM that they had driven 4 hours to attend and Kappa Sig by their nationals for excessive debt and other allegations -- so the whole thing just died.

That house is still there, but it's some kind of office now. We always wondered whatever happened to that guy who set the fire and wondered why he wasn't charged with arson.