DALLAS -- Gay activists are organizing protest rallies against a judge who says he is amazed at the reaction to his statement that he gave a killer a shorter prison sentence because the victims were 'cruising' homosexuals.
State District Judge Jack Hampton, 56, made the comments to the Dallas Times Herald, which published the story Friday. Hampton said he received his first telephone call at 6:30 a.m. Friday and was quickly inundated. One call was a death threat.
'You work hard all your life and you do what you think is right and sometimes I wonder if it's worth it,' Hampton told the Times Herald in Saturday editions. 'If I can't come down here and say what I think is right, then they need to get somebody else for the job.'
Hampton left the courthouse at about noon Friday. The Times Herald said he went on a hunting trip out of town.
Hampton said Friday that he sentenced Richard Lee Bednarski, 18, to 30 years in prison instead of the maximum life in prison, as requested by the state, two weeks ago because the two men he killed were homosexuals.
Hampton was quoted as saying, 'These two guys who got killed wouldn't have been killed if they hadn't been cruising the streets picking up teenage boys. I don't much care for queers cruising the street.'
Hampton said the sentence would have been harsher had Bednarski killed 'a couple of housewives out shopping, not hurting anybody.'
'To me, he has declared open season on gay men and lesbians,' said Kay Vinson, a gay activist and shop owner in Dallas Oak Lawn section, where the murders occurred in May.
Vinson announced a protest gathering at noon Monday in front of the courthouse.
'I can understand ignorance on a certain level but not from a judge, a district judge,' said Kay Morse, a Dallas AIDS volunteer worker. 'It's horrifying to think that (gays) can be murdered like this. What if we declared war on all the red-headed, blue-eyed men or all bald-headed judges?'
William Waybourn, president of the Dallas Gay Alliance, said his membership will hold a protest Tuesday night at City Hall. He also asked Hampton to resign.
'Just as Judge Hampton is a reflection of a society that elected him, that society can now remove him from office,' Waybourn said.
Kevin Berrill, director of the anti-violence project at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, D.C., called Hampton's statements 'revolting' and he described the judge as 'a disgrace to his profession.'
The Texas Human Rights Foundation Friday filed a complaint against Hampton with the state Commission on Judicial Conduct.
'The statements by Judge (Jack) Hampton constitute judicial misconduct,' said Tom Doyal, legal director of the Austin-based Human Rights Foundation. 'He has created an entirely new class of crime: murder of expendable classes of people.'
Robert Flowers, executive director of the Commission on Judicial Conduct, said Hampton's reasoning likely falls within the bounds of judicial discretion.
'I can't right off think of any part of the code that (Hampton's action) might violate,' he said.
