{"id":1154,"date":"2014-08-14T19:10:12","date_gmt":"2014-08-15T00:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/?p=1154"},"modified":"2014-08-14T19:10:12","modified_gmt":"2014-08-15T00:10:12","slug":"georgia-gay-man-sentenced-to-10-years-for-defending-himself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/archives\/1154","title":{"rendered":"Georgia Gay Man Sentenced to 10 Years for Defending Himself"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By John Mack Freeman<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Atlanta resident Luke O&#8217;Donovan was violently attacked outside of a bar in Atlanta, GA in December 2012 by five men. The men stabbed him several times while shouting homophobic slurs at him. O&#8217;Donovan defended himself successfully with a pocketknife and made it to an area hospital for treatment.<\/p>\n<p>Sounds like a happy ending to the story, right?<\/p>\n<p>Police arrested O&#8217;Donovan for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. This week, he was sentenced at his trial to ten years in prison for injuring his assailants while defending himself from a hate crime.<\/p>\n<p>Via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pinknews.co.uk\/2014\/08\/14\/us-atlanta-man-receives-10-years-in-prison-for-defending-himself-in-anti-gay-attack\/\">PinkNews<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"color: #222222;\">The Luke O\u2019Donovan Support Committee issued a statement about O\u2019Donovan\u2019s sentencing, saying: \u201cThis is the epitome of a hate crime. Witnesses report seeing between five and 12 men attacking O\u2019Donovan, stomping on his head and body, and stabbing him in the back while calling him a \u2018faggot.\u2019<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #222222;\">\u201cThe demonization of O\u2019Donovan\u2019s actions is a part of a growing trend: criminalizing those who successfully defend themselves from hate crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #222222;\">The committee\u00a0added: \u201cO\u2019Donovan\u2019s defense team was only able to negotiate the 10-year sentence after video footage surfaced of one of O\u2019Donovan\u2019s assailants participating in an attack of a transgender woman on July 3.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By John Mack Freeman Atlanta resident Luke O&#8217;Donovan was violently attacked outside of a bar in Atlanta, GA in December 2012 by five men. The men stabbed him several times while shouting homophobic slurs at him. O&#8217;Donovan defended himself successfully with a pocketknife and made it to an area hospital for treatment. Sounds like a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":1155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-carousel","category-glbt-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}