Homophobic motivation helps murderer get minimum sentence

The Kharkiv district court gave the murderer of a gay the minimum sentence – eight years.

The minor student homophobe was imposed the minimum punishment for the murder, the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union (UHHRU) reports.

He got acquainted with the victim on the Internet and arranged a meeting at his home. The offender inflicted twenty knife wounds and stole a cell phone from the man’s apartment.

The offender carefully planned and prepared the murder, which is usually taken into account by the court as an aggravating circumstance.

However, the Kharkiv court reduced the punishment because of “the attitude of the murderer to the committed crime, his initiative and aims to meet the victim, and the number of wounds.”

Mykhailo Tarakhkalo, Director of the UHHRU Strategic Litigations, says that “such motives for such a soft judgment shock. In fact, the judge pointed out that if you kill a person on the grounds of hatred toward the LGBT community, then you can expect a fairly lenient sentence. And if you kill a man for some other reasons, the punishment can be more severe. There is a logical question: do the homophobes work in the judicial system?“

It is worth noting that the European Court of Human Rights clearly states that in case there is suspicion of a hate motive in crime, the law enforcement officers should conduct additional investigation. It is extremely important to combat the various manifestations of hatred against the various groups of society.

Lawyer of the aggrieved party Roman Likhachev plans to lodge the appeal in the near future.

Earlier, the experts explained why the law enforcement officers did not want to investigate the crimes with homophobic motives.