ChicagoTribune.com – By Howard Witt – Tribune senior correspondent
Controversy over provision threatens bid to protect more victims, boost federal authority
Houston – Back in April, despite everything he had gone through, it looked as if David Ritcheson was finally going to get a happy ending.
The 18-year-old high school senior from suburban Houston had been savagely assaulted in a 2006 hate crime, apparently targeted because he was Mexican-American, by two youths who tried to carve a swastika into his chest, burned him with cigarettes and kicked a plastic tube from a patio umbrella into his rectum, rupturing his internal organs.
But after 30 surgeries and months in the hospital, Ritcheson had healed enough to testify before Congress in favor of expanding the federal hate crimes law to cover more victims and make it easier for the Justice Department to investigate such cases.