BIZARRO WORLD LAW

Washington Times reports on 13-year-olds in South Carolina being charged with lynching, even though no rope was involved, no one was seriously injured, and there was no evidence of racial animus:

South Carolina’s lynching law, the only one of four in the nation that is still routinely used, was enacted to end the state’s long history of white vigilante justice against blacks. But that law has borne strange fruit.

Today in South Carolina, blacks are most often the ones charged with lynching — defined in the statute as any act of violence by two or more people against another, regardless of race.

Though they make up just 30 percent of the state’s population, blacks account for 63 percent of the lynching charges, according to an Associated Press analysis of crime statistics.

For every 1,000 blacks in South Carolina, 2.07 were charged with lynching, compared with 0.46 charged per 1,000 whites.

One professor quoted in the piece calls this “ironic.” Moronic is more like it.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.