Should A Religious Racist Be Pardon?

[Solitary]

1 of Mark Wahlberg's victims says he shouldn't be pardoned

BOSTON â€" A victim of one of Mark Wahlberg's racially motivated attacks as a teenage delinquent in segregated Boston in the 1980s insists he shouldn't be granted a pardon for his crimes.

Kristyn Atwood was among a group of mostly black fourth-grade students on a field trip to the beach in 1986 when Wahlberg and his white friends began hurling rocks and shouting racial epithets as they chased them down the street.
"I don't think he should get a pardon," Atwood, now 38 and living in Decatur, Georgia, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"I don't really care who he is. It doesn't make him any exception. If you're a racist, you're always going to be a racist. And for him to want to erase it I just think it's wrong," she said.

Mary Belmonte, the white teacher who brought the students to the neighborhood beach that day, sees things differently. "I believe in forgiveness," she said. "He was just a young kid â€" a punk â€" in the mean streets of Boston. He didn't do it specifically because he was a bad kid. He was just a follower doing what the other kids were doing."
The 43-year-old former rapper, Calvin Klein model and "Boogie Nights" actor wants official forgiveness for a separate, more severe attack in 1988, in which he assaulted two Vietnamese men while trying to steal beer. That attack sent one of the men to the hospital and landed Wahlberg in prison.

Wahlberg, in a pardon application filed in November and pending before the state parole board, acknowledges he was a teenage delinquent mixed up in drugs, alcohol and the wrong crowd. He points to his ensuing successful acting career, restaurant ventures and philanthropic work with troubled youths as evidence he's turned his life around.
"I have apologized, many times," he told the AP in December. "The first opportunity I had to apologize was right there in court when all the dust had settled and I was getting shackled and taken away, and making sure I paid my debt to society and continue to try and do things that make up for the mistakes that I've made."

Court documents in the 1986 attack identify Wahlberg among a group of white boys who harassed the school group as they were leaving Savin Hill Beach in Dorchester, a mixed but segregated Boston neighborhood that had seen racial tensions during the years the city was under court-ordered school integration.

The boys chased the black children down the street, hurling rocks and racial epithets including "Kill the n-----s!" until an ambulance driver intervened. Wahlberg was 15 at the time.

Atwood still bears a scar from getting hit by a rock. No one was seriously injured, but the attack left other invisible â€" and indelible â€" scars.

"I was really scared. My heart was beating fast. I couldn't believe it was happening. The names. The rocks. The kids chasing," Belmonte told the AP.

Wahlberg and two other white youths were issued a civil rights injunction: essentially a stern warning that if they committed another hate crime, they would be sent to jail.

In 1988, Wahlberg, then 16, attacked two Vietnamese men while trying to steal beer near his Dorchester home.
According to the sentencing memorandum, he confronted Thanh Lam, a Vietnamese immigrant, as he was getting out of his car with two cases of beer. Wahlberg called Lam a "Vietnam f------ s---" and beat him over the head with a 5-foot wooden stick until Lam lost consciousness and the rod broke in two.

Documents say Wahlberg ran up to another Vietnamese man, Hoa Trinh, and asked for help hiding. After a police cruiser drove past, he punched Trinh in the eye. Later, he made crude remarks about "slant-eyed gooks."

Wahlberg ultimately was convicted of assault and battery, marijuana possession and criminal contempt for violating the prior civil rights injunction. Trinh declined to be interviewed by AP, and efforts to locate Lam were unsuccessful.
Judith Beals, a former state prosecutor involved in the cases, said Wahlberg's crimes stand out because he violated the injunction with an even more violent attack on people of yet another race.

"It was a hate crime and that's exactly what should be on his record forever," Atwood said.
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AP reporters Johnny Clark in Atlanta, Steve LeBlanc in Boston and John Carucci in New York contributed to this report.

I like him in movies, but he is a religious nut that is a racist! Fuck him! Solitary

[Munch]

I think depending on the case study, you can assess person by person if time is something that would make them into decent human beings, or if the crimes they commit early in is just part of their character and will always be part of it.

We've all said things when we were young that was stupid, and most of us grow up and leave that behind.
Wahlberg flat out not only chased after children with intent to seriously injure or even kill them like a savage, but a year later doing it again to another person of a minority because of that primitive instinct that is just part of his character.

Nothing short of a complete psychological breakdown and years would training would make someone like this into a decent person, better people like this get locked up and the key thrown away.

[Solitary]

But! But! Ted was a good movie.  Solitary

[Mr.Obvious]

First i heard of this, but yeah, seems he's an Asshole.

But... Why a 'religious' racist? I don't know much about him; is he that religious? I didn't read it in The article of not.

[mainethinker]

Oh no, marky, mark and the funky bunch.... So its not so!

[stromboli]

Should we pardon Roman Polanski for raping a 13 year old girl? Or Bill Cosby? I don't think fame and success warrants a get out of jail free card, but I'm not a lawyer. No, I don't think he deserves it. I think he's a selfish dickhead.

[mainethinker]

I'm not 100% sure if the Bill Cosby thing is real I think that it happened too long ago for us to make a judgement call on that... that's just me

ECUBHJ YRXXJR C

[trdsf]

I agree, no pardon for Mark.  What he did was not a one-off, it was part of a larger pattern of behavior he engaged in back then against both Asian- and African-Americans.

I'm willing to take him at his word that he's a changed man.  However, that doesn't mean that he gets a whitewash (no pun intended) of his past.  It didn't become important to him to seek a pardon until he started having trouble expanding his restaurant chain; his conviction is causing problems in some states because he's a convicted felon.

That suggests to me that true penitence is not the motivator here.

[Berati]

I have to take his age into account. I can't compare the actions of Cosby or Polansky as adults to those of a 15-16 year old.
I don't know if the pattern of behavior continued later into his life so I can't say if he should be pardoned or not but I do believe that people can change.

[mainethinker]

south boston is a hard place