Do people who don’t support hate crimes legislation because they don’t want to punish want is in a person’s mind want to completely remove the concept or mens rea from the law?
Ideally yes that is exactly what I’d like to do. I want punishment to be the result of a crime that can be verified with hard unrefutable physical evidence. Once you venture into attempting to evluate peoples intentions/desires/etc… you are just setting yourself up for abuse/faking/corruption. Don’t punish a person for hating some minorities - punish him for the actual harm caused to them.
So you would see you no differnce between:
- a man who is driving to work with his step-child in the car and is running late and decides to just leave the child in the car for the day because he doesn’t care one way or another if the child dies and thinks that his wife should be driving the child to school like she usually does
- a man who is driving to work and because he is late just tragically forgets the child in his car because he doesn’t usually drive the child to school
- a man who leaves his step-child in the car to kill the child and get insurance money
In all cases the child is left in the car and dies. Should they receive the same punishment?
I started hearing about “hate” crime legislation about 12 years ago. My immediate reaction was like this: if I’m white and get mugged by a white guy, that somehow he committed less of a crime than if I were black. So now I’m being cheated of justice just because I share the same race as the perp.
Liberty in this country includes the right to have “wrong” ideas. People have a right to be a bigot and to be racist, no matter how wrong it is. Is every mugging by a black guy against a white guy now a worse crime because of hate laws? Does the crime need to be seen as any worse by the justice system? And is the black on black crime now “just a mugging” with no hate component? To what ends is hate crime legislation the means?
I’ve just been uncomfortable with the idea that if I get mugged and beaten by a white guy who needed a crack fix, that’s “just a crime” - but now it’s a lot worse if I’m a black guy and the mugger spouts an epithet in the process… although his goal was the same.
It is the man’s step-child in number 2.
Let me say at the outset that I agree with hate crime laws. But, that being the case, I don’t think that most opponents of hate crimes want to get rid of mens rea (faulderon possibly excepted). They just don’t feel that committing the crime due to bigotry should be enough to increase the severity of the punishment.
Then shouldn’t they just say that they don’t think bigotry is that bad, not that they don’t want to judge what is in a person’s mind?
The idea behind hate crimes laws is that the goal is not the same. It doesn’t become (theoretically, of course) a hate crime just because the mugger spouts a racial epithet while mugging you…it’s only a hate crime if the mugger targets you specifically as a black guy because you are a black guy.
Hate crime legislation was designed because acts against a members of a specific population simply because they are members of that population have an effect beyond that of the action itself. If I burn down your house for fun, that’s certainly a criminal and antisocial act, and it really negatively affects you. However, if I burn down a synagogue because I hate Jews, not only is the congregation affected because they lost a place to worship, they’re also affected in their sense of self. Every Jew in the community sees him or herself at risk because of their Jewishness. The law as it exists doesn’t have any real way to recognize the difference between the two crimes. Hate crime legislation is an attempt to remedy that.
Partly it’s because you don’t win an argument if you come across as “pro-bigot”, but it’s more, I think, that most anti hate crime people do think that bigotry is really bad…they just don’t think it can be legislated against. There are two main arguments against it. First, that it might be unconstitutional. Even though bigotry is horrible, a person has the right to be a bigot, and if they punish me for my crime more harshly than they punish you for your crime because I committed mine out of bigotry, and yours out of avarice, then that’s pretty much discriminating against me because of my beliefs.
The second argument is that motivation can be really difficult to figure out in the real world. If I beat you up and steal your wallet, did I do it because you’re black, or just because I wanted the wallet? That might be too much to ask a jury to determine.
I would love nothing more then to be able to punish the uncaring asshole and let go the innocent victim of an unintended accident. But both of them will always claim that it was an accident. I don’t want the state wasting my money trying to determine that considering how easily whoever ultimately makes the judgments can and has been wrong. It costs too much to figure out something we can’t touch or see (like a dead child). It may or may not be all that better then just judging the results and ignoring the intentions. My approach is inflexible and would lead to some victims of circumstance, but it costs a lot less and takes a lot of the responsibility out of the hands of people who are fallible and corrupt by nature.
Here is the problem I have with hate crime legislation. A couple months ago, here in Dublin, a Lithuanian immigrant was beaten into a coma. There have been a number of incidents against Eastern Europeans recently, and it was initially assumed by many that this was a hate crime. Well, it turned out not to be. The guy was beaten to a pulp because when his attacker demanded he hand over his can of beer, he didn’t do so as politely as the attacker thought he should have. Should the attacker’s sentence be less because it wasn’t a hate crime? It seems to me that this guy is at least as dangerous as someone who chooses his victims because of their ethnicity.
I don’t have a problem with saying that judges should be able to impose heavier sentences if certain factors are present in the attack, including clear racial bias, but I don’t think that racially-motivated crimes should be treated by the law as inherently worse than all other crimes.
Nope, because mens rea is not relevant to hate crimes legislation (“hcl”) or the debate about them. Mens rea means intent to commit a criminal or reckless act. HCL opponents instead object to the injection of motive as an element of a crime - i.e. the reason why the criminal had the mens rea to commit the crime. HCL opponents equate this to “thought crimes” and assert that motive is not considered an element of other crimes.
We’ve had this argument many times before, so I won’t do my whole spiel, but the “motive” objection is flawed. As it happens, there are, and long have been many other crimes in which motive is an element of a crime. I’ll give two examples, taken from New York state law. In New York, intentionally burning down an unoccupied building, along with certain other conditions, constitutes the crime of arson in the second degree. However, if the same person burns down the same building, meeting the same conditions, but where the person’s motive is “pecuniary gain” - money - the crime is now arson in the first degree, with stiffer punishment. Similarly, if a person guns down another on the street, with certain conditions attaching, that constitutes the crime of murder in the second degree. However, if the same person shoots the same victim, with the same conditions, and the motive is that the victim is or may be a witness against the perpetrator, the crime is murder in the first degree, which is a capital crime.
So, in New York, your motive can get you killed.
Sua
One thing the keep in mind is that hate crime legislation usually references “protected” classes. That is, if a straight person kills a gay person because of homophobia it can be a hate crime, but the same is not true if a gay person kills a straight person because of heterophobia. In effect, the law treats one person’s life as more “valuable” than another’s using discriminatroy criteria.
To me, this is no different than a situation where racist police departments don’t try as hard when investigating the murder of a black gang member as they would for a white businessman’s son/daughter.
-VM
I disagree. That is an argument they could use, but all they say is we should not be judging was is in a person’s mind. I never hear a clear distinction drawn between motive and mens rea. They just say what in in a person’s mind should not be part of punishment. faldureon holds this position.
Yes, the sentence should be less severe because the crime is less severe. He would be more dangerous if he targeted minorities because these aren’t just crimes against people they are crimes against society. In the 2nd case we would all just have to watch out when we engaged in certain risky behavior: hanging out among drunken pubgoers. In the first case only the minority group needs to watch out but they need to watch out every second of every day. See the difference? Hate crimes put more of a burden on a certain segment of society. And they divide us, making society less coherent. Being a more serious crime it merits a more serious punishment.
Why do you believe that they are? It seems to me this is merely one factor in determining the severity of the crime. Of course the severity of the crime should affect the punishment.
Not necessarily. It could be that the law is just recognizing that certain segments of society are more vulnerable. Still, I would agree that all kinds of hate crimes should be discouraged. We are divided enough.
I’d beg to disagree in principle, though you have a definite point insofar as actual practice goes.
Hate crimes laws as they exist do not define “protected classes” but rather “protected classifications.” In short, you cannot discriminate against a person on the basis of his/her sex, race, sexual orientation, etc. Granted that this will usually be applied as regards women hitting the glass ceiling, black people not being permitted to seek positions reserved for whites, gay people being discriminated against by homophobic straights, etc. – but it is so written that it protects everybody. A white man seeking a job at a black-owned business, a man seeking a promotion in a company run by a strong feminist, a straight man feeling that his gay boss is favoring his gay coworkers – each has a valid case under employment non-discrimination law.
If Jerry Falwell had been telling the truth in his memorable speech about having been assaulted by a gay mob, he would have validly been the victim of a hate crime – gay men assaulting him for his religious stance and his being straight.
The law is written to protect straight WASP males from discrimination by women, other ethnic groups, gays, etc., just as much as it is to protect the latter from discrimination by the former. It’s merely that the instances of anti-black, anti-woman, anti-gay discrimination and hate crimes seem to be far more prevalent than the reverse.
Well, sorry to say, you are wrong. Mens rea and motive are two very distinct legal concepts, and opponents of HCL do not wish to eliminate mens rea from criminal law. faldureon takes a, shall we say, minority view.
As for the distinction between motive and mens rea, it is really quite simple and clear. Mens rea denotes the intent to point a gun at and shoot another human being. Motive is the reason why you wanted to shoot another human being.
Sua
You are wrong. HCL do not reference protected classes of individuals. Gays, blacks, women, or Muslims receive no greater protection under HCL than do straights, whites, men, or Christians. It is the motive of harming another because of their sexual orientation, race, sex, or religion that is subject to greater punishment. If a buch of black men beat a white man because they wanted to “get whitey,” they have committed a hate crime.
Sua
I support HCL, at least in theory. Here’s why:
Hate crimes are not just the product of what’s in the perpetrator’s mind, but how they make the community feel. Hate crimes are acts of terrorism. In these cases the victim is not the only victim. If a white man lynches a black man (under certain racist circumstances), the entire black community suffers. The entire community must fear for its collective life.
In the example of tha man and the baby, it’s not a hate crime because other babies are not made to feel that they might be the next victims of the guy just because they’re babies.
Graffitti is a crime. Should a person that spraypaints “I love Becky Sue” under an overpass receive the same punishment as someone who spraypaints “Death to Zionist pigs” on the door of a synagogue?
One is an insight to violence, the other is not. HCL is not required for the law to see how one is more dangerous than the other.
The problem I have with HCL is that there are already plenty of laws to prosecute for the crimes committed without adding another component. I can see how, during a trial, that the prosecution can appeal to the jury’s sensibilities regarding the hate motive, thereby soliciting the harshest penalty. Additional legislation is not required.