Was Racial Slur Anger or Hate Crime?

Aug. 16 -- Lonny Rae doesn't deny he used the N-word last October and attached it to a threat he uttered against a black man who scuffled with his wife, who, like Rae, is white. But he says he doesn't deserve to be locked up for five years because of it.

Prosecutors in Adams County, Idaho, however, feel differently, and have charged Rae with disturbing the peace and felony malicious harassment, a crime punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

It's a case that has inflamed passions in this rural Idaho county and illustrates just how hard it can be to interpret laws against hate, determining when the line is crossed from angry, bigoted speech that's protected under the Constitution to a criminal statement.

For Lonny and his wife, Kimberly, at least, it's an obvious case of an angry man who chose some inappropriate words that he had no real intention of carrying out.

Bad Calls?

The Raes and their lawyer, Edgar Steele, say that it all started as Kimberly Rae, who said she worked as a bookkeeper, production editor, reporter and sports editor for the Adams County Record, was covering a football game the local high school team lost, thereby ending the team's chances in the state playoffs.

Rae said she wanted to take a photograph of the trio of referees brought in from Boise who worked the game because she thought they had determined the outcome.

"A lot of penalties were called throughout the game and I decided I was going to include that perspective in my stories," she said.

She said she left her husband at their truck to get a photo as the referees went into the locker room. She had already snapped one picture when one of the refs asked her not to take their picture, so she turned to rejoin her husband, she said.

She hadn't gotten more than a few steps away, though, when one of the referees, who was black, grabbed at her camera and tried to take it away from her, she said. She wouldn't give it up, and the referee, who stood a foot taller than Kimberly and outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds, wrestled with her to get it.