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 The bill, which unanimously passed in the California Legislature
last week, followed furor over the arrest of black activist Maile
Hampton on a charge of felony lynching during a "Black Lives Matter"
demonstration in Sacramento in January.
Hampton's attorney, lawmakers and other supporters rallied behind
her at court and on social media, saying it was ironic she had been
charged under a decades-old law that was originally enacted to
protect black detainees from white lynch mobs.
Hampton's supporters also called for the removal of the word
lynching from the penal code, saying its application was not
appropriate.
Thousands of African-Americans were victims of lynchings, or
extrajudicial public execution by hanging, in Southern states in the
19th and 20th centuries. “Whether obsolete, perverse or just wrong, it’s time for that law to
change,” Sen. Holly Mitchell, a California legislator representing a
district including historically African-American communities in Los
Angeles, said in a statement on her website.
Hampton was detained for allegedly trying to pull a friend from
police custody during a January protest over the killings of unarmed
black men by white police officers, the Sacramento Bee reported.
Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert has since
reduced Hampton's charges to resisting arrest, a misdemeanor.
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Schubert did not respond to a request for comment about the case.
Mitchell, who introduced the bill to change the language of the law,
said penalties would not be eliminated or reduced under the bill,
and killing a person by mob action would remain a felony.
The crime of trying to remove someone from police custody is
punishable by between two and four years in state prison.
(Editing by Victoria Cavaliere)
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