U.S. Judge Richard W. Roberts Expresses Political Sympathy With Gay Terrorist

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Floyd Corkins is the lunatic homosexual who, angry at Chick-fil-A and guided by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map,” sought to commit mass murder at the Family Research Council:

Corkins retrieved a firearm from his backpack and pointed it at the security guard. The security guard charged Corkins and a struggle ensued, during which Corkins fired three shots, striking the guard in the arm. Despite the gunshot wound and Corkins’ subsequent discharges of the gun, the security guard, Leonardo Johnson, heroically succeeded in disarming the defendant and forcing him to the ground and onto his belly.
According to a statement of offense, signed by the defendant as well as the government, Corkins targeted the Family Research Council because of its views, including its advocacy against recognition of gay marriage. He entered the building with the intention of shooting and killing as many employees of the organization as he could.
“A security guard’s heroism is the only thing that prevented Floyd Corkins, II from carrying out a mass shooting intended to kill as many people as possible,” said U.S. Attorney Machen. “Our entire community is thankful to the hero who stood up to this heinous attack. Today’s 25-year prison sentence demonstrates the steep price to be paid for turning to violence to terrorize your political enemies.”

One of those whom Floyd Corkins intended to kill — although he didn’t know her name — was an intern named Anna Maria Hoffman:

While interviewed by the FBI, Corkins admitted that he wanted to “kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-Fil-A sandwiches in victims’ faces, and kill the guard.”
I was one of those people who could have been his victim. I was on the 6th floor of the FRC building working on my pro-life internship assignments. I could have lost my life. . . .
It is time to stop Southern Poverty Law Center labeling FRC, and other organizations that just want to make society a better place, as “hate groups.” I only pray that people will learn from this shooting that wrongful labels and violence are not ways to solve political disagreements. Let’s stop the hate to prevent acts of violence like this shooting from occurring again.

Because Anna Maria and her sister Gabby are friends of mine, the hateful motivation of Corkins’ crime is particularly offensive to me, but I guess Judge Richard W. Roberts doesn’t really care:

Prosecutors sought a sentence of 45 years for the would-be mass murderer. Judge Roberts sentenced him to only 25.
In announcing his sentence, Roberts stated (in part):

You are not alone in criticizing those who oppose gay rights, but a man killing opponents does not change the opponents’ minds. It does not open their hearts. It does not bring about gay rights. If anything, it makes opponents more entrenched. If anything, it feeds whatever moral arsenal they perceive to fight against gay rights. Many indications show the opponents losing favor, but it has not been because of anyone killing them.
When a president thoughtfully spoke up, it shook loose many of the entrenched opponents in his faith community. When some women and men highly revered in America chose to come out, that added far more support for gay rights than murder ever will. That’s how we affect positive change in this country, not by shootings.

Ed Whelan is correct, if somewhat restrained, in calling these remarks “grossly ill-conceived.”

Why would a federal judge feel obliged to express sympathy with the motives of a political terrorist? How many other lunatics are out there, feeling the same kind of fathomless rage that inspired Floyd Corkins, who now have every reason to believe that if they act on that rage, a judge will sentence them leniently because “thoughtful” people share their hatred of people like Anna Maria Hoffman?

 

66 comments

  4. Mr Corkins is 29 years old, so the maximum sentence would keep him in jail until he is 54. Assuming that he earns the maximum of 54 days off for good behavior, he could wind up serving only 21 years . . . and that assumes that President Obama doesn’t pardon him!

  6. Yet, another example of how far along we’ve gone toward the ideal Leftist system of justice. That is, cases are not decided based upon facts, i.e. a premeditated armed assault of innocent people, but upon where the players fall relative to each other on some master oppressor/victim spectrum. Facts will only play a role where all the players are of the same group, i.e. white, heterosexual, Anglo-Saxon, Christian Males or Black, Single Parent Females.

  7. The comment out of context and to the limited kernel of truth is not wrong (you do not change minds by violence). But a sentencing judge should never be stating such a thing in the manner he wad delivering it. There is zero basis to justify violence based on opposition to gay marriage. Would this judge have said the same thing, for example, if an abortion protester killed some abortion doctor? I seriously doubt it.

  10. “Why would a federal judge feel obliged to express sympathy with the motives of a political terrorist? ”

    Is he the Prop 8 kind of judge?

    If he’s not Gay Mafia, at least “Gay Agenda” Mafia, that’s clear enough.

  11. He is a Clinton appointee and previously worked in the Clinton Justice Department under Janet Reno as one of the deputies to the chief of the Civil Rights Division. This is unsurprising.

    You know, though, it would not surprise me if it were a Republican appointee uttering such tripe. The bulk of the legal profession and the bulk of that class in society has grown insufferable (and a menace to the rest of us).

  12. Federal time is calculated at 85% of the sentence (for good behavior). For certain sex charges and misbehavior during incarceration, 100% is ofter imposed. Additionally a post release ‘Supervision’ period of 2 or more years (there is no maximum) is part of every federal sentence.

  14. Perhaps this judge is establishing a new precedent for a “homophobia
    panic defence” – rather like the opposite of the “gay panic defence”…

  15. Well, that’s better, for us, than he would have served in the CA or NY.

    But I’ll say again what I’ve said before, is there a sudden shortage of rope in this country?

  16. Appalling to give further voice and approval to the ostensible ideological excuse offered up by this monstrous would-be killer. Radical chic: the painless indulgence of someone else’s dangerously radical agenda. Terrible words spoken from a comfortable couch in an ivory tower. (Or, in this case, a judge’s bench protected behind the metal detectors and multiple bailiffs in a cushy federal courthouse.) Disgusting, gutless, facile abuse of power.

  19. IIRC from my last look at the descriptive statistics, state prisoners in New York serve a mean of 50% of the upper bound of their indeterminate sentences. The standard for parole for those incarcerated in county jails is two-thirds of the determinate sentence.

  20. The term ‘radical chic’ was coined to describe the absurd spectacle of Leonard Bernstein, then director of the New York Philharmonic, hosting a fundraiser for the Black Panther Party. I suppose it could have applied to numbnutzes on the faculty of Cornell as well.

    The problem with this man’s attitudes is that they are not ‘radical’. What Bernstein did in 1970 would have been looked upon as bizarre even in many academic families. This judge Roberts is expounding attitudes that are quite common if not the default in that class of society. Bourgeois dignity should put the kibosh on this sort of thing. It fails to.

  21. The damning statement came not from the Judge, but from the man Corkins shot. Leo Johnson forgave Corkins, heaping a short-ton of hot coals on Corkins’s head. Either the young heals from his mental illnesses, or commits suicide within a few years.
    The judge is irrelavant, regardless of his self-opinion. If there is one thing Obama has taught America, it’s that judges have zero power to compel behavior. If DC can ignore the SCOTUS Heller decision, red states can ignore Roe v Wade.

  24. Exactly. And the Civil Rights Division of DOJ is a festering boil upon the Republic which should be eliminated, and any who served in it disbarred for life.

  25. Read Glenn Sacks and Helen Smith on the operations of matrimonial and family courts.

    —

    I suspect penal courts do not work this way. Slum blacks are psychologically remote and when appearing in court with regard to civil and family matters, are often embarrassing due to the haphazard nature of their daily decision-making (see yesterday’s episode of Judge Judy – “I can award you the car but you have to pay off the tickets and correct that scam of yours with regard to the title…”). So, slum blacks do not get too many mulligans. The judges have to walk through the parking garage on their way back home, and that influences their thinking.

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