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Cal Poly student dodges hate crime charge

March 22, 2016

Poly Apartment

San Luis Obispo County prosecutors have charged a Cal Poly student with vandalism for allegedly drawing swastikas and racial and homophobic slurs on a Cal Poly apartment. Prosecutors opted not to charge the student with a hate crime. [KSBY]

Matthew Kolesnikov is accused of defacing the door of a Poly Canyon apartment where sophomore Neel Kogali lived. An image shows the writing on the door included “I ♡ Niggers” and “Clean the TRASH!!” The word “fag” and hammer and sickles were also on the door.

The alleged vandalism occurred last month. Kogali has since moved to another apartment.

Cal Poly officials are investigating the incident, as well. The Mustang News reported Kolesnikov is currently suspended.

Kolesnikov is scheduled to be arraigned in San Luis Obispo Superior Court on March 29.


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What a little stinking shit!! Here’s his facebook page :)


https://www.facebook.com/matthew.kolesnikov


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Isn’t Hate Crime essentially a Thought Crime? Guess they thought that he thought he was being a jokester or prankster instead of being racist.


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Hate Crimes in themselves should be Unconstitutional under the first Amendment.


“Amendment I.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”


The Amendment is pretty clear, just because you don’t like some speech, is irrelevant.

The Government is not allowed to restrict it!


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Our government does not let things like amendments get in the way of controlling every aspect of life. It’s for your own good!


If you rob someone at gunpoint, that’s a physical crime. But if you do it because you dislike that person’s race, religion, etc, and they can prove it, now it’s also a hate crime, so two charges instead of one. A hate crime is actually a thought crime.


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Actually, Rich, while your argument makes sense in the libertarian present, it lacks historic First Amendment basis. The Framers intended the amendment to prohibit prior restraint — the government’s ability to ban speech or publication before it happened — and that’s all. If you remember high school history, just a few years after the amendment’s adoption, Congress passed something called the Alien and Sedition Act which made “sedition,” or politically hateful speech, a federal crime for which one could be punished. It was widely accepted then, and still today, that it is unconstitutional to block speech, but that there may be some legal consequences after the fact — thus, for example, we still have libel laws. We’ve loosened up a bit on that since the late 18th century, but still today the legal notion that there are some forms of speech that can be punished AFTER they are uttered remains acceptable under the courts’ interpretation of the First Amendment. By the way, the First Amendment’s ban on prior restraint was understood by all, till that good 1970s Republican Richard Nixon tried to get prior restraint imposed on a bunch of newspapers about to publish “state secrets” contained in the Pentagon Papers; the courts told him he was wrong and let the publication proceed. And we’re all better off for that.


I do agree with you that calling this sort of hateful graffiti a “hate crime” with all the jeopardy that creates for the stupid kid, is a bit much. Dropping that very serious charge seems reasonable. The kid needs some head help he’s not likely to get in prison.


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Hate is like a seething boil that festers. Eventually, it will break loose and the disgusting gunk will be all over others. I feel sorry for those that are in this kid’s way when that happens someday….wife, children, perfect strangers….anyone who happens to be around.


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I would consider to this to be just foolish doodling. It is when people tattoo this stuff on their bodies or in some cases their forehead that I would consider sincere at that moment in time. Notice that I said, “at that moment in time”, stupidity usually doesn’t last long. Just spank him and send him back to class….


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I have to disagree, when I doodle, I don’t do it on a door, I don’t use words that are not even in my vocabulary that express hate, and I certainly don’t do it to someone I live with. To use the words they used and to have also expressed to him on prior occasions their hateful feelings about his religion vs. theirs, shows a pattern of behavior that goes way beyond foolishness.


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I disagree as well. Even though this person is a student, he’s still an adult. Foolish doodling sounds along the same lines as – boys will be boys. It’s simply not an okay thing to be doing to someone’s door. I’m glad there was a consequence behind what he did.


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I find the difference in treatment from the earlier hate incidence which involved an anonymous Facebook message somehow turned into a death threat, vs. this hate incidence perpetrated in the victim’s own home by the victim’s own roommates to be unbelievable.


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very interesting point.


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talk about an equal opportunity hater. Pretty clever of a russian vandal to use the hammer and sickle. He may as well have signed his name to his “artwork”. What a moron.


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Not to mention the apparent ignorance of the “relationship” of the two ideologies those symbols represent, say, about 75 years ago. This is a college student?!?


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So the Russian boy evades the hate crime charge. Do you suppose it was due to his choice of purple and yellow Crayola’s that told the D.A. that he was just fooling around?


SMH


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Or that he doesn’t know how to draw a swastika, the ones he drew were not actual swastika.


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