Judge Says Homosexuals at Fault in Their Murder

by Kelley Shannon

A gay rights leader warned Friday that outraged voters will remember a judge’s statement that he gave a lighter sentence to a murderer partly because his two victims were homosexuals. “These two guys that got killed wouldn’t have been killed if they hadn’t been cruising the streets picking up teen-age boys,” State District Judge Jack Hampton told the Dallas Times Herald in Friday’s editions. “I don’t much care for queers cruising the streets picking up teen-age boys,” he said Thursday. “I’ve got a teen-age boy.” Hampton, 56, who has been on the bench eight years, said the homosexuality of the murder victims entered into his decision on Nov. 28 to give the 18-year-old killer a 30-year prison term instead of a maximum life sentence. The judge said he would have given a harsher sentence to Richard Lee Bednarski if his victims had been, for example, “a couple of housewives out shopping, not hurting anybody.”

Hampton expressed no reservations about his statements, the newspaper reported. “Just spell my name right,” Hampton said. “If it makes anybody mad, they’ll forget it by 1990 (election year).” William Waybourn, president of the Dallas Gay Alliance, said the organization’s eight telephone lines began ringing constantly after the newspaper published the judge’s statements. He said he hopes Hampton’s remarks will prompt the public to work to remove him from the bench when he comes up for re-election. Robert Flowers, executive director of the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, declined to comment on Hampton’s statements and said the 11-member commission would investigate if a complaint were filed. Flowers also said the commission occasionally initiates an investigation itself, but declined to say whether that would happen in Hampton’s case.

The Texas Human Rights Foundation filed a complaint against Hampton with the judicial conduct commission. “The statements by Judge Hampton constitute judicial misconduct,” said Tom Doyal, legal director for the non-profit group active in gay and lesbian issues. Doyal said Hampton’s remarks “show open disregard for the laws of our state. He has created an entirely new class of crime: Murder of expendable classes of people.”.