That would be fine and dandy if you were the sole arbiter of power.
Declaring that, on principle, people ought not to be intimidated by thugs, does not make the intimidation magically vanish, any more than recognizing the effects that it has creates it.
Right now, in England, there is an ongoing series of “retaliatory” attacks against muslims. One man has been killed, and there have been many threats, assaults, incidents of vandalism against mosques and muslim (or perceived muslim) homes and businesses. Racist extremists are capitalizing on the bombings by inciting “retaliatory” action through leaflets and websites.
What, practically, can be done to discourage this sort of hooliganism? Is a brick thrown through the window of a mosque really exactly the same in its effect as a brick randomly thrown through a garage window by a surly drunk? Can misdemeanor vandalism charges offer enough deterrent to make a dent in this campaign of terror, particularly since the vast majority of these cowards aren’t caught at all?
Do you honestly believe that, unless the brick comes through their very own window, and not merely their neighbours’, this sort of thing has no effect on innocent muslims in the middle of all this? Or that if it does, it’s their own fault for not being brave enough to pretend it isn’t happening?
It’s nice that you’re secure enough to opine that hate crimes are exactly the same as similar crimes without bias. “KILROY WAS HERE” painted on a business wall is the same as “GET OUT KIKE!” If anyone loses any sleep over a racist targeting their shop, they’re granting a bigot too much power. Everyone should feel so secure.
It seems doubtful that either of us will be able to persuade the other.
Unless that’s a wry comment on how far afield this thread has wandered, I’m not sure what you mean.
I doubt that Weirddave and I would have much to disagree with about Mr. Paris. I suspect we both feel his sentence is liable to be lighter than we’d like, which is hardly a controversial stance. I guess there’s a possibility that we might disagree on the relatively subtle point of whether it would be better if he were executed or locked up for the rest of his life – I don’t know his stance on capital punishment. (Anyway, it’s been done to death, if you’ll excuse me.)
I guess the hate crime angle has legs because there are opposing sides that people feel strongly about. I’d be the first to admit that I think it has little to do with the Paris case, at this point. If the kid was being beaten hard enough at five months old to break bones, I doubt it really had anything to do with a genuine belief that the child might be gay. The alternative is not much better – that he was just a brute who was going to beat the kid anyway, maybe, as suggested by witnesses, because he suspected he wasn’t the kid’s biological father – and that the idea of beating him as “sissy prevention” was a twisted justification. One that seemed to be accepted by his friends and family, which does speak to a pernicious enculturation: “Oh, it’s to make him tough?” “Worried he might be gay?” “Well, that’s alright, then.” “We’ll just go back to reciting scriptures, here. You carry on slapping the three-year-old around, and don’t mind us.” It boggles the mind how it can happen.
It’s natural that the case, as described in the first article, should get us onto the subject of hate crimes, and as horrible as the murder of a toddler is, bias crime is ultimately a more interesting and more universally important conversation.
So here we are. Just to be sure, what was the one single issue that the kid’s murder was supposed to get us to agree on? Because either we already agree on it, or it hasn’t got very much to do with the case.
Goddamn, I have the worst case of logorrhea. Bedward for me.
That’s the thing that’s mind-boggling: the fact that he could kill a person because he was afraid that person was gay, when the person in question was fucking THREE.
Bullshit. Punishing racially-motivated crimes harder than non-racial crimes doesn’t diminish the value of anyone’s life unless the law only protects one minority. Hate crime legislation does not protect blacks but not whites, or gays but not straights, or women but not men. It protects anyone who has a race, gender, or orientation which, last time I checked, was every fucking human being on the planet.
Courts do it every day. It’s called “determining motive.”
No, they punish actions. Hate crimes are not targetted at an individual, but at an entire subset of society. Spray painting a gang sign on a synagogue is just vandalism. The victim is whoever owns the synagogue. Spray painting a swastika on a synagogue is a threat to every Jew in the area. Punishing crimes against multiple people harsher than crimes against one person is not some ground breaking new area in American law.
Which is precisely what hate crime legislation does, because an action designed to terrorize a whole bunch of people is qualitiatively different from an action designed to terrorize one person, and ought to be punished accordingly.
All that being said, in this particular case, I don’t think what the guy did qualifies as a hate crime, as it was narrowly targeted at his own son, not the gay community at large. In addition, the nature of the crime makes it moot anyway, as beating your own kid to death for any reason at all ought to result in the harshest penalties possible.
And that’s exactly what I have in my post: four people, murdered in the exact same way, for three different reasons. You keep saying that motive doesn’t matter. Which is great, if you’re arguing for a total reform of the American justice system from the top down. But as it stands now, motive matters a whole fucking lot, even without considering hate crimes. All hate crimes do is add another level of motives to consideration in sentencing.
And don’t claim you never brought up insanity if you’re going to use Howard Dean as an example. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.
That’s not what you have in your example at all. you have 4 people, 2 of which were murdered the same way, one of whom was killed by accident and one killing where you invented an insane perpetrator. How is that 4 people “murdered in the exact same way”?
Also, you need to read up on your law. Killing someone “for no reason” does not meet the legal definition of insane. Unless you are claiming that Howard Dean has been certified insane already, that dog won’t hunt.
It’s already illegal to murder someone. Why do we need anything else? If the law states that a murderer will be sentenced to X years in jail, how does passing an addendum “but if you murder someone for racial reasons, you’ll get sentenced to X+Y years” provide additional “protection” for anyone? Do you think someone is going to set out to murder someone and then pause, saying “Well, if I’m caught for this murder I’d get 10 years, which is no big deal, but if they find out I belong to the KKK, they’ll give me 15 years. Yikes! That changes things completely! Guess I’ll go to the movies instead.” Seriously, what “protection” are you talking about?
Calm down. We’re having a debate. Regarding the above, so do laws without hate crime legislation. I do not see it as being necessary, just an easy way for some to assuage guilt and pander to what is currently a very PC populace. All we have to do is vigorously enforce the laws we have.
And… Whether the motive is he slept with my wife, he killed my dog, he’s an asshole, he looked at me fun, he’s gay, he’s black, he’s white, he’s a Yankees fan, or a thousand others means squat to me. The motive goes to prove guilt. If person A kills person B with that bat for any of the resasons mentioned I don’t care. That he did in fact beat him to death I DO care about and will punish him accordingly.
How is a guy coming out of the bar and beating someone to death with a bat targeting an entire subset of society?
Although the swastika may represent a threat to every Jew in the area, the painting of a swastika causes no one actual physical harm. I think you would agree that a kid COULD paint a swastika and no harm would folllow. The crime is vandalism. Now if this is a recurring incident designed to terrorize a neighborhood or group, I think there are specific laws for that.
Can you offer any examples of this?
The only example I see as pointing to “terrorizing” is the swastika one. And I think there are laws that specifically address that. (Possibly those designed to combat the KKK or the Mafia?) Any lawyers out there?
I couldn’t agree more. It doesn’t qualify as a hate crime. I cannot conceive or imagine how someone could not only hate gays so much to want to kill them, but to look at a three-year-old and see sexuality, and not innocence. And then for it to be your own son! I’m sorry to say that incidents like this prove there is evil inthe world. There is no punishment to harsh, nor too painful, nor too slow and agonizing.
Hey, I’m cool as a cucumber. That’s not going to stop me from calling bullshit bullshit. And the above paragraph is bullshit. For someone who’s pretty hot about imputing motives on people who commit violent crime, you’re awful quick to assume motives for people on the other side of this debate.
Do you think a man who murders his wife because she didn’t have dinner ready for him when got home, deserves to serve a longer jail sentence than a woman who murders her husband because he kept beating her for not having dinner ready when he got home? Do you think that someone who steals to buy food deserves teh same punishment as someone who steals to buy smack?
Eh? What does physical harm have to do with it? It’s property damage and intimidation that are the crimes, here.
Are you kidding me? You are aware that if you blow up a bus with ten people on it, you’re going to get a harsher sentence than if you blow up a bus with only one person on it, aren’t you?
Yes, there are laws to address that. They’re called hate crime laws.
Although what the man in the OP did was a heinous murder I also don’t believe it would count as a hate crime. However it does reflect the man’s substantial homophobia which comes from the culture he’s raised in and therefore, as others have said, does highlight the insidious nature of hate.
Getting away from the specific case, I think the focus on murder, perhaps the ultimate crime, distorts the discussion. While the concept of hate crimes might not add much to punishment of murder, I think it is reasonable to add to the punishment of other lesser crimes such as assault and vandalism when hate for a group is part of the motivation. As other posters have noted, the random beating of a man coming out of a gay bar is meant to intimate the whole gay community. The burning of a black church by hooded men is meant to keep the black community in its place. The hate aspect of these crimes makes them more than simply burning down the house of a particular neighbor you despise or a man who flirted with your wife.
In many crimes there are aggravating circumstances that make the punishment more severe. You can assault someone and the charge can be a misdemeanor depending on the circumstances. But if you use a deadly weapon it can be elevated to a felony. And it should be that way. Getting in a bar fight is bad. Getting in a bar fight and pulling a knife on someone is worse.
Likewise hate crimes are aggravated cases. The crime is the assualt or other charge plus the aggravated circumstance of the intimidation directed towards the class of the victim. And hate crime legislation potentially applies to everyone. If a group of gay men go cruising for a straight guy to beat, then they’ve committed a hate-based crime and can be charged with the aggravated charge.
Thinking a three-year-old could be gay; :smack:
Thinking the way to deal with a potentially gay three-year-old was to “de-cissify” him; :smack: :smack:
Thinking this involved full-contact “play” fighting; :smack: :smack: :smack:
Being unable to stop this short of crippling or killing the little tyke. :: there aren’t enough :smack: s in the world ::
There’s so much hopelessly fucked-up with this guy it’s hard to know where to begin; and that’s why I don’t think “homophobic society” is the biggest worry in this instance.
You don’t suppose that growing up in a world where it’s very common to believe and to voice the belief that gay is a bad thing to be and that having a gay child is an embarrassment had anything to do with the moron in question thinking these smackworthy things, do you?
Intent, which is the core of the “accidental crowbar” example, is used to classify the crime. ie, manslaughter vs murder.
Motive is – as was pointed out – only used to aid in proving guilt. Motive was introduced into sentencing with the passage of the hate crime laws. Now, motive may also be used in determining the likelihood of repeat offenses, which is entirely logical, IMO, and may affect sentencing as well, but for different reasons.
Weirddave (that dirty stinkin’ Ravens fan) was talking about motive, not intent. Anyone who played the manslaughter/murder card or accidental/intentional distinction in refuting his position completely missed the boat. He wasn’t talking about intent at all, and I believe that’s why he’s calling your arguments strawmen.
So, when two people have their skulls bashed in by crowbars, one intentionally and one accidentally, those are two completely different crimes, because part of the definition of a crime is the intent of the criminal. Not the motive. Accept, of course, for hate crimes, which appear to be a special case.
Apparently, some people aren’t too sold on hate crime legislation. I’m personally on the fence, as I was equally swayed (on that specifc issue) by both Weirddave and Larry Mudd.
We already do. We differentiate between murder one (premeditated), and murder two (spur of the moment, or just unplanned). We take into account of HOW the murder happened, how brutal it was.
If I take your example, we shouldn’t even do that. “Why not, they’re just as dead?”
:dubious:
And for godsakes, I am so sick and tired of people jumping all over people when they complain about homophobia or racism. “Oh my god, he was murdered, who cares WHY the guy did it?” Can you honestly NOT see why someone like Otto or matt_mcl might be just a TAD more upset about that?
