I see no reason that an act of assault, murder, vandalism, or mscellaneous mischief should be more severely punished because the person committing it was motivated by racism, sexism, homophobia, or religious bigotry than if the perpetrator were motivated by any other reason. If someone assaults me shoots me in the back of the head because he wants my wallet, I am no less dead than if he does so because I am a black man married to a white woman*, or because I’m an agnostic, or because I think “Yummy” when I look at Taye Diggs. My wife is still a widow; my dad has still lost his son; the rest of my family is just as bereaved. While I can understand increasing penalties based on the heinousness of the deed–e.g., dragging a man to death behind a pickup truck so that he dies in slow, horrible, mangled agony is worse than simply shooting cleanly–I don’t agree that the bigotries I listed above are any worse motives than avarice, lust, or personal animus.
Anyone care to argue the contrary position?
*Well, if you want to be pissy, Mrs. Rhymer is biracial and self-identifies as black, but you’d never know unless she told you.
Generally I oppose hate crime legislation. I will accept it, however, as a factor in sentencing. The effect on the community of a racially based killing, for example, is worse than a simple murder - the intent is often a terroristic one, designed to spread fear through a particular community. As such, it is possible to argue, I hope with principled reasons, that a stronger penalty is deserved, just as it is possible to argue that shooting a police officer in the line of duty deserves a stronger punishment than shooting a fellow dealer in an argument over the weight of a baggie of coke.
I wouldn’t create a separate category of offense for hate crimes, though.
I woud argue that it’s valid to punish crimes more severely if they’re motivated by bigotry. One of the factors in judging the seriousness of a crime is its effect on the community, and a hate crime has a specific chilling effect on the community affected.
Suppose one of my neighbors is a meth addict. In a paranoid delusion fostered by his addiction, he decides that I have millions of dollars in a numbered Swiss account. So he breaks into my house, while I am sleeping, binds me, and tries to torture that information out of me. As I have no such account I naturally cannot give him what he wants, so ultimately he kills me.
How is that less “chilling” than if I am tortured and killed by a Klansman for being in an interracial marriage? Why should the punishment be any different?
As a variation on the impact on the community argument, hate crimes also encourage retaliation and can spiral into wider violence more readily than other kinds of crimes.
The problem with all of these arguments is that you are functionally criminalizing conduct because of the expressive effect of that conduct. That is, the further negative impacts on a community that result from a hate crime result from the expression of hate. But expressions of hate, no matter how vile, are protected by the First Amendment–and for good reason. If we let the government make content-based restrictions on speech because of the impact that speech has on the community, we invite the very restrictions to go to the heart of our freedoms. It isn’t clear to me how the added penalties of hate crimes are distinguishable from punishing hate speech–both punish the expression of a mental state because of the impact that idea has on the community. Very dangerous.
I’m going to agree with the OP. Having certain thoughts shouldn’t be illegal. You shot a minority in the face because you hate his skin color and you want to terrify his neighbors. I shot a minority in the face for money and to steal his wife, and I’ll serve a shorter sentence than you?
It’s less chilling in the sense that it is not designed to specifically target a particular part of the community for fear. Now that person will probably be liable for a higher sentence for the use of torture as part of the crime…
But we have decided as a society that where there is to be fear of crime, it is better if that fear is shared. Deliberately placing a particular part of society, in particular a part based on a categorization that we have come to view as unacceptable in society, in fear is seen as worse.
Is it worse to beat a womanto death because she is a woman or because she is Muslim? Is it worse for a white man to beat a black man to death because the white man thinks all black men wan to rape white women, or for a black man to beat a white man to death because the black man wants revenge for hundreds of years of oppression? Are assaults against gays worse than assaults against transgendered persons? If there is only one B’hai in Memphis, and I murder her because I doh’t wan t to share my city with persons of that particular faith, is my crime less heinous because there is, in fact, no one else who should fear me if I remain free?
If some meth addict attacks you and tortures you it is heinous but the community around you views it as you just becoming the unlucky, random target of a demented person.
When someone targets based on race/religion/etc. then they are, to an extent, attacking all people of that group. That goes above and beyond attacking the direct victim.
When the KKK lynched black men they were not just killing one guy, they were sending a message of terror to all black people that they could be next. In short, it is a form of terrorism.
I’m with the OP. By the logic of it having a greater effect on society, murderers of the homeless should recieve lesser sentences while anyone who kills Bill Gates would get a considerably increased sentence. I’m very much against changing punishment based on the thoughts of the criminal, and indeed I think it can help foster the very attitudes that lead to hate crimes in the first place.
In both cases, I think the offense is the same - murder. That’s why I oppose separate categories of hate crimes. And in this case, both crimes carry a terroristic aspect, which can be included in the sentencing. I am not sure what you are asking here.
Again, both are murders. I would probably rather defend the second than the first. Again, both are motivated by a general hatred that we have determined as a society is damaging.
No. Nor the other way round.
That’s the most interesting one of your examples. I’d answer no in the end, because assaults on one minority community tend to have a knock on effect on other minority communities. There’s also the overall feeling we have that while all acts of murder are wrong, some reasoning for it is more defensible than others. A man who murders his daughter’s rapist may well still merit punishment, even conviction for murder, but it is not unprincipled to argue that he deserves a lesser punishment than someone who murders his neighbor’s daughter because he doesn’t like living next to black people.
And once we have decided that the motivation of crimes plays a role in sentencing (which is hardly a radical concept) sometimes we are faced with situations like your lone B’hai. Even without a knock on effect to other minority communities, we have established, through the law, that certain motivations deserve higher punishment. Simply exterminity the whole community of a group, such that the motivation behind that imposition of a higher punishment no longer exists, does not alter the underlying law itself. And so, for consistency, even if the rationale behind the law is no longer present, there is an argument for continuing to impose it. Not least because otherwise the incentive is for a racial killer to move from individual terroristic acts (“move out or you will end up dead like your daughter”) to wholescale genocide.
I’m not sure I disagree (as should be obvious from my previous post). There are good public policy reasons for not distinguishing between Bill Gates and a homeless guy when setting punishments. But does that mean we should never account for the societal effect of a crime? Should assaulting the President be a greater crime than assaulting your neighbor? Under your principle, why is threatening the President illegal, but not threatening your neighbor?
So when the meth addict attacks a random person, that puts fear into EVERY member of the community, whereas a hate crime only targets SOME members of the community.
Under that logic a hate crime should actually get a lesser sentence since fewer people are placed in fear.
And you will find that a crime motivated by putting fear into the population at large ends up with a higher sentence than one without that motivation. And I don’t have a problem with that.
The meth addict isn’t seeking to scare the crap out of the community at large, even if that is the effect. The racist is trying to send a message to the targetted community. Can’t you see that difference?
I don’t like hate crime legislation. In my view, it says some victims are more important or more worthy of protection than others. This seems contrary to basic notions of fairness.
I think the President and a neighbour should be equally protected by the law in terms of simple threats. I don’t think killing a President in and of itself is a worse crime than killing a neighbour - the difference in my eyes is that to kill a President is really not likely to be an unpremeditated attack in this day and age.
I’d say that societal effects should be taken into account, but only if meant. A couple of idiots beating up a gay guy because they happened to see him walking down the street may cause fear in the gay community, but they at the time may just have wanted to beat the crap out of that gay guy. OTOH, it may well be they have a plan to beat up gays, have been stalking him for a while, etc. precisely to cause that fear. In which case, I am reasonably happy with the leeway judges have in sentencing as well as the different laws they’d break to account for the difference.
What if I had a vendetta against people named Johnson? Then I would be targeting an even smaller group of people than a racist. Should I get a double super enhancement to my crime for a murder of a person named Johnson?
This issue has always been a conundrum for me. On the one hand, I agree with what you say here, Oakminster. On the other hand, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s less about who the victim is and more about the motive. If the motive is to terrorize a community, then I think that’s a valid reason to consider that when it comes to sentencing.
I was careless in my wording. Yes, some threats against your neighbor are criminal. But the class of speech that fits into that category (so-called “true threats”) is thought to be smaller than the class of prohibitable speech as it relates to threatening the President.