IIRC, we’ve already had this debate. Yes, motive can legally REQUIRE a mandatory higher sentence.
Example: New York State Penal Code.
NYPL s. 150.15
NYPL s. 150.20
A Class B violent felony in New York State is punishable by a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 25 years in prison. NYPL 70.02(3)(a). A class A-I felony is punishable by a minimum of 15 years and a maximum of life (or, in capital crimes, death). NYPL 70.00(3)(a)(i).
So here, the degree of punishment, even the categorization of the crime itself, is solely dependent upon motive. And hate crimes have nothing to do with it.
Another example in New York law is murder. Murder 2 is premeditated homicide. One type of murder 1 (death-eligible) is premeditated homicide where the motive is silencing a witness or potential witness (cites available upon request).
In most instances, you are correct. However, in many (non-hate-crime) instances, motive is indeed an element of the crime.
In the American legal system, motive can be (i) an element of the crime, and (ii) that it can be the basis for mandate harsher punishment.
Nightime, do you think it ridiculous that rape is punished more severely than assault? Think about it - the victim of a rape and the victim of an assault may suffer the exact same level of injury - both may have to spend 3 days in the hospital, miss work for two weeks, and have to go through therapy for 3 years. But the rapist will be sent to jail for 10 years, while the assaulter will go to jail for one.
Is it ridiculous that an armed robber who steals $50 goes to jail for five years, while the purse snatcher who steals $50 goes to jail for 3 months? Both inflicted the same level of injury.
What about the embezzler who steals $5,000? She gets 2 years. The bank robber who steals $50,000 gets ten.
The fact of the matter is that the penal code reflects our values. We find it more henious to commit rape than assault. We are more outraged by the idea of someone waving a gun in a victim’s face and threatening violence than someone who simply grabs the money. And we punish that which offends us more deeply with harsher sentences.
It’s the same with hate crimes. Crimes committed because of what the victim is offends our sensibilities more than crimes committed for monetary gain, or in the heat of passion, etc. So we punish them more harshly.
That’s the way our system has always worked.
I’m ashamed to admit it, and I’m sure that I’ll get my arse handed to me on this one, but I disagree with both minty and Sua on this one.
The increased punishments for those crimes reflect the potential harm in each situation. Rape is punished more severely than assault because the emotional trauma associated with rape is usually much greater, even when the physical assault is less severe. I know a woman that was severely beaten and then raped. The rape did less bodily harm, but it caused much more severe emotional and psychological trauma. She has told me that she would much rather be beaten to death than ever suffer a rape again.
The armed robber gets five years while the purse snatcher gets 3 months because of the number of people harmed, and the potential harm created by the use of an armed weapon. The purse snatcher and armed robber may cause similar levels of actual harm, but the bank robber holds an entire building full of people hostage with the threat of deadly force and steals money from a number of people, while the purse snatcher victimizes only one person and never threatens peoples’ lives.
Same with the embezzler vs. bank robber. I’m sure we can agree that the embezzler may actually hurt more people if he puts an entire company out of business, thereby robbing a number of people of their livelihood. But none of those people’s lives were put in danger.
And again, the examples cited, and the first example that I thought of (breaking and entering into a habitation with an intent to commit robbery therein) include an element related to motive because that’s the best way to define the crime. As Nightime pointed out, that’s mens rea – the intent to commit the specific crime – which is legally distinct from motive – the reason for committing the crime.
Absolutely true. But one of our values is that the punishment should fit the crime. To give a Law & Order-type example, let’s say a guy kills his girlfriend because she’s pregnant. This statute says that it would have been worse to kill his girlfriend because she was black. Personally, I think they are at least equally repugnant, and the punishment should be handed out according to their repugnance (along with other factors, like the likelihood of rehabilitation, etc.).
The problem here is that these statutes remove the ability of the judge and/or jury to make the punishment actually fit the crime. I wouldn’t mind if there were sentencing guidelines that allowed the amplification of punishment based on racial motive. There are certainly more severe societal harms that result from racially-motivated murders (as opposed to, say, murders for money) that we ought to be able to combat by deterring them more severely. But mandating an amplified punishment based solely on racial bias is not the answer.
In fact, the judges and juries already have the ability to make the punishment fit the crime. You can already be sentenced to life in prison for murder, regardless of the motive. Judges and juries should be allowed to exercise that discretion where appropriate, and shouldn’t be forced to apply an amplification that will often run counter to the values of our society, rather than be consistent with them.
And I would wager that it is significantly more traumatic to be beaten because of the color of your skin than it is to be beaten because you were flirting with somebody’s girlfriend. Once again, the objection merely demonstrates the wisdom of hate crimes laws.
Quite so. The increased penalties for hate crimes fit my values quite fine, thank you. Sorry, but neither you nor I get a personal values veto on such matters, but that’s democracy for ya.
No judge or jury has the authority to assess a sentence longer than the maximum allowed by law. What hate crimes laws do is to increase that maximum.
As for murder, you’re quite right that when life is already required, it doesn’t gain anyone anything to make life available for a racially-motivated murder. But of course, we can always hook the sumbitch up to an IV and pump him full of poison, or we can make that life sentence mandatory instead of discretionary. As long as there’s a way to increase the punishment, there’s room to express society’s judgment that hate crimes are worse than other crimes.
Possibly. I would certainly wager that it’s more traumatic on a societal level, especially given the often tenuous racial relations in this country. But again, I can’t say it’s worse to be beaten because of the color of your skin than because you’re gay or because you’re trying to exercise your right to an abortion or because you happened to have burned your husband’s dinner. Why not let the judges and juries that have actually heard the case weigh the facts and levy an appropriate punishment? Mandatory sentencing guidelines lessen the judge and juries’ ability to make the punishment fit the crime.
Certainly a good point. And because society at large (through its legislatures) apparently agrees with you, I have to defer to the majority. But juries are another democratic institution, and if they decide that a particular crime should be punished by 2 years instead of 6, then is that any less of an expression of the will of a democratic society? (Of course, this argument breaks down when we’re dealing with judges.)
My opinion, though, remains that mandatory sentencing guidelines will more often than not result in less appropriate punishments. What if a person beats someone because of racial animus and then completely changes his life while awaiting trial? This law would apparently keep a judge/jury from weighing that fact in his favor. And to me, that results in an injustice.
Incidentally, I’m working under the assumption that the increased penalty is mandatory. If I’m wrong about this, please show me where I’m wrong. I’ll still think it’s unnecessary, but it’s hard to argue against just increasing the maximum.
[quote\But juries are another democratic institution[/quote]
Juries may be a lot of things, but they are most certainly not a democratic institution. Primarily, they are an eminently fallible means of resolving questions of fact. Nobody votes on who gets to serve on a panel, and the litigants are, to an almost irrational extent, bound by and damn fool thing those 6-12 persons determine–a rather undemocratic process, if you ask me.
If a defendant is convited of first degree murder, it is completely mandatory that the defendant will be sentenced to no less than 20 years in prison.* Would you prefer that the entity tasked with sentencing the defendant be granted complete discretion to assess a sentence anywhere between time served and lethal injection?
While it is reasonable to dispute the particular sentences that may be handed out for a particular crime, it is unreasonable to argue that there should be no mandatory sentences for persons convicted of specific crimes.
*Figure removed from nearest rectum. Actual sentence may vary by rectum and jurisdiction.
All right, I conceed the point. However, keep in mind that this is very uncommon, and is not the case in all districts. And, even though motive indisputibly must be proved in the examples you cited, I still think motives like “silencing a witness” or “arson for hire” are different than hate, if only because they are so much more clear. Hate crime laws are inevitably vague, because you have to prove the inner thoughts of a person. How much of the crime has to be based on hate? How do you know how much was based on hate? Are you really sure there was not something in the person’s past, something else in his mind, that was the motive? You can never really know, and thus the results of such laws are unclear and in my opinion not worthy of the justice system.
See, this is my biggest problem with hate crime laws. I don’t understand how you can say that normal punishment is too lenient for someone who kills someone based on some characteristic, but is just fine for someone who kills his kids because they live with his ex, or kills random people in a small town for fun.
It seems to me that punishments are often too lenient for horrendous crimes, and often too harsh for lesser crimes.
Hate crime laws exacerbate these problems. They provide the political illusion of harsher penalties, while allowing the lenient penalties to remain in the vast majority of cases.
If the punishment isn’t enough for hate crimes, then it isn’t enough for the same crime when the motive is, for example, to terrorize a family!
Well, I can think of a lot of motives that in my opinion are just as bad as hating a certain characteristic. If someone has been mugged several times by irish guys, grows to hate all of them and kills one, that is an evil, evil crime. But is it more evil than a guy who sneaks into children’s bedrooms at night and kills them because he wants to terrorize a town?
So I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree, as it seems certain neither of us will convince the other. I still stand by my five reasons for being against hate crime laws.
At least in Texas, the latter crime would be capital murder, punishable by the death penalty. The former would only be first degree murder, punishable by between 5 and 99 years in prison.
Do you have any evidence to support your contention that the emotional or psychological trauma associated with rape is usually much greater than that associated with assault? I fear that is just an assumption on your part.
More to the point, do you have any evidence to support your contention that our lawmakers decided to punish rape more severely because rape allegedly causes greater psychological or emotional trauma? Or could it be that they decided to punish rape more severely because they found it more outrageous?
Don’t get me wrong; I have no problem with that. But that’s because the law reflects my values.
You are assuming facts not in evidence, counselor. Where did these extra people come from? And, indeed, they aren’t relevant. The same punishment is imposed on an armed robber without regard to the number of people in the place being robbed; whether it’s just the proprietor behind the cash register of the 7-11, or 15 people in the store, the crime (and the punishment) is the same.
As for your second argument - that armed robbery is punished more severely due to the potential harm - let’s consider that.
You are right, that is one of the reasons armed robbery is punished more severely than theft. What that means, however, is that we punish people for what they might have done, rather than what they actually did. I don’t have a problem with that either, but it demonstrates that there are other factors than the actual injury caused that are considered when determining sentences.
Second, let’s consider potential harm itself. Who has more potential to cause harm - the assaulter who assaults based upon skin color, or the assaulter who assaults because the victim was sleeping with his girlfriend? There is a far greater pool of potential future victims of the race-based assaulter than the sex-with-my-girlfriend-based assaulter. Unless, of course, the girlfriend is sleeping with 12% of the population.
