Another One: Steven Simpson

To Jordan Sheard it probably sounded like a good idea at the time, didn’t it? I mean, it was all in good fun, right, and everyone was yelling, probably something like ‘Do it! Do it!’ And so he did ‘it’. And now Sheard will spend the next three-and-a-half years in jail. I wish it was a longer sentence.

Steven Simpson had Asperger’s Syndrome; he had speech impediment; he had epilepsy; and he was gay. In other, words, he was the perfect target for bullies.

Simpson, who had recently started taking college courses that would help him learn life skills necessary for one with Asperger’s, had made some new friends and invited them back to his apartment for a party.

But then, it became less of being Steven’s friends, and more about how to torture him. He was dared to strip down to his underwear, and then partiers scrawled obscenities—‘Gay boy’ and ‘I love dick’ were found on his torso—before he was doused with tanning oil. And that was when Sheard decided to make it even more fun, and he set Steven Simpson on fire.

Steven Simpson died two days later after sustaining “significant burns.”

A number of LGBT rights advocates believe Sheard's prison term is far too lenient, but the prosecutor in the case, Tim Warburton, says the sentence was "within the range of what would be expected had it been considered a hate crime," and that it would not be appealed.

Jordan Sheard

It wasn’t a hate crime, y’all, even though folks wrote anti-gay epithets across his body; even though it was Steven Simpson’s crotch that was sprayed with oil and set on fire.

But it wasn’t hate because, as Warburton said, Jordan did not intend to kill Steven.

Except that he did; and he, and the others, taunted, tortured, ridiculed, bullied, burnt and murdered Steven Simpson because he was different. He was all sorts of different, and he was murdered, but, still, it wasn’t a hate crime.

How that happened I’ll never know.

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