1. Warren Diepraam, the special prosecutor here, is notoriously, legendarily and even historically hardass. He has been doing the best he can to steadily erase the line between DWI manslaughter and felony murder for decades now, infamously reasoning that crashing into someone in your car amounted to assault with a deadly weapon (that being your car). Formerly a Harris County ADA, he retreated to Montgomery Co in a mass exodus of like-minded prosecutors when the old hang 'em high guard got voted out of office, and somehow now is in Waller Co. If he was too much of a hardass for Montgomery County, I don't know what to say. In his Harris days, he charged a Pasadena school bus driver (not intoxicated) who ran over a kid with murder for no real good reason at all except to garner headlines; charge was reduced to manslaughter, and the poor driver was acquitted because the kid was probably at fault or it was just one of those things.
He is Soud Afrikan, which made it a little odd when he handled Sandra Bland's investigation. You'd think Waller Co would have realized that would not have sat well with the bleks in such a high-profile case. He really does seem to just hate everybody equally, so if he is not corrupt, this kid is up shit creek.
2. I am not a big fan of hate crime legislation in general but I think there is an argument to be made that rollin' coal is a hate crime, in that the coal rollers target cyclists and drivers of cars like Priuses or those bearing stickers endorsing ideas or politicians they don't like. In other words, librulz. I believe in some states political affiliation is a protected class, ironically, because of butthurt conservatives and their stupid persecution complex.