Defendant in San Jose State bias case says Confederate flag not racist (CA)
By Joe Rodriguez
POSTED: 02/10/2016 05:24:59 AM PST
SAN JOSE -- In the first public response from the former San Jose State University freshmen facing hate crime charges over a series of racially tinged pranks on a black suitemate, one of the expelled students testified Tuesday that he didn't consider the repeated display of a Confederate flag in their dormitory to be an insensitive symbol of racial supremacy or slavery.
When his lawyer asked what he thought of the controversial flag, Logan Beaschler, 20, called it "just a symbol of small government, conservatism."
Beaschler and two other former SJSU students, Colin Warren and Joseph "Bret" Bomgardner, face misdemeanor battery and hate crime charges. A fourth student in the case was 17 at the time and was charged as a juvenile offender ...
Prosecutor Carolyn Malinsky cross-examined Beaschler during the afternoon. She has sought to establish a pattern of abuse targeting Williams, the only black student in the eight-man dormitory suite in the fall 2013 semester. In addition to the flag incident at the dormitory tower, Beaschler admitted that he also participated in the collaring of Williams with a bicycle U-lock, but he said it was not racially motivated ...
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_29496087/defendant-san-jose-state-bias-case-says-confederate
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