The Florida House voted overwhelmingly to protect the homeless under the hate crimes law. This measure will add homeless people as a category in hate crimes law that protect people against attacks because of a person’s race, color, ancestry, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, mental or physical disability, or advanced age. Some people say too many groups are getting special treatment under the hate crimes law. However, the number of attacks on homeless people is at the highest level in almost a decade.
Florida will soon become the second state in the country, after Maryland, to protect the homeless. Lawmakers who support the bill were motivated by a 2006 case in which surveillance video footage showed teens beating to death a homeless man in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with baseball bats.
Norris Gaynor
That case involved the three teens William Ammons, Brian Hooks, and Thomas Daugherty, then 18, 18, and 17. An affidavit in the case quoted a witness who said Hooks and Daugherty, each holding a baseball bat, approached Gaynor(45) as he slept on a Fort Lauderdale park bench the night of January 12, 2006. Norris Gaynor, 45, was beaten to death.
Norris was attacked simply because he was homeless. Not only did the three kill Norris on that horrible night, they also attacked two other homeless men in separate attacks during that same night.
The witness, Anthony Clarke, told police that he saw the three teens approach Gaynor as he slept on a park bench. Daugherty began whacking Gaynor with a bat, Clarke said. Hooks also was holding a bat but delivered no blows, the witness said. As Gaynor lay dying, Ammons shot him with yellow paintballs, later remarking that the beating felt like “teeing off,” police said. Ammons was later sentenced to 15 years in prison. Gaynor was beaten so badly his own father didn’t recognize him. 
The teens had broken his nose, five ribs and crushed his skull.
Hooks was sentenced to 30 years in prison. His sentencing came one day after Circuit Judge Cynthia Imperato sent his co-defendant, Thomas Daugherty to prison for life.
Below is a clip about Daugherty’s sentencing. It includes what the surveillance camera caught that night from the other beating. That attack was on another homeless man, Jacques Pierre, and was captured on surveillance camera videotape near the Florida Atlantic University.
The tape showed two men holding baseball bats chasing Pierre down. One of the men was seen beating Pierre with the bat before running off. My warning to you: it is graphic.
Defense attorneys had argued the three teens never intended to kill Gaynor and were only out to “beat up some bums” that night, as horrible as it sounded. Prosecutors said the teens were smoking marijuana and drinking vodka when they decided in the early hours of Jan. 12, 2006, to go cruising and “beat up some bums.” They drove to three separate locations, first assaulting Jacques Pierre who was 61 years old.
Ammons admitted he did the driving that night, that he blasted Gaynor with paintballs during the fatal attack, and that he clobbered a third victim, Raymond Perez, with a golf club.
Read the article here.
