Oops. I meant incite to violence, but it works either way.
Well what if the community lies about how it feels to persecute certain crimes as hate crimes when they are not? If your legal system envovles judging peoples “feelings” rather then just presence or lack of intent you are just setting yourself up for a slow and painful death by slippery slope and abuse by anyone who gets to judge the feelings of others. Instead of trying to set up the checks and balances that are doomed to fail as new excuses come along why not save yourself that much work without that big of a difference in the result?
I suppose we could then judge the crime by how a reasonable person might be made to feel. This has been a pretty useful yardstick in the past.
My problem with HCL is the same problem (to a lesser extent) I end up having with all criminal prosecution. It’s really hard at times to figure out what the truth is. Evidence for a person’s motive is notoriously hard to find, and I’m unwilling to punish someone more just in case it was a hate crime.
But we already judge people by what’s in their minds. Intent might be obvious at times, but other times it isn’t. We judge people by what we think they should have known rather than what we can prove they did know. The man who leaves his step-child in the car doesn’t get a bye if he claims he had no idea that leaving a child in a hot car could kill him. On the other hand, he might not be prosecuted because someone might judge that his intent was 2, without any other evidence. What evidence exists, after all?
IANAL, so I’m not sure how well the hate crime aspect of hate crimes has to be proven. If the man crime falls within certain parameters, is the “hate crime” aspect tacked on without significant evidence? Or is it a very tough conviction to get (which I believe it should be)?
I think that any crime commited with the intention of causing fear to members of the community outside the actual victim are hate crimes, and should be cause for greater punnishment by the law.
Whether the crime is a homophobic beating of a homosexual or assumed homosexual person who turns out to be heterosexual is equivalent. Also any of the gangster style beatings of a person in order to create fear and comliance from others is also a hate crime. The pimp who beats up a prostitute to keep his other prostitutes in line is again a hate crime. It is the fact that the crime is committed in order to cause intimidation and fear to others that is the key.
So what if the person just writes “Zionist pigs” without the “Death to” part? That’s not inciting to violence, but it still is more serious than “I love Becky Sue”.
I don’t disagree that mens rea and motive are different, but when people use the “I don’t want to punish people for what is in their mind” argument, they are going to have to get rid of both mens rea and motive because they are both in the mind. It is the “don’t judge what is the mind” argument that I have the problem with.
Mens rea is intent, not motive – burning down your own decrepit outbuilding, with police notified and the local fire department standing by as a preventative measure, and any insurance you may have had on it cancelled, in order that you can build a new barn/garage/wing of your house where it stood, is demonstrably not arson – you’re committing the same act, but with no criminal intent.
But notice how intent works into the idea of hate crimes, fairly subtly but inexorably: If you assault Fred because he was making a pass at your wife, your intent was simply to instill in him the idea that he should not do so, and/or to punish him for having done so. But if you assault Fred simply because he is gay, you are sending a message to all gay people that if found out, they also are in danger of assault. Likewise, I cannot offhand think of a mens rea-less reason why someone might want to burn a cross, but the intent of the KKK in doing so is to subtly terrorize black people by doing it on the lawn of one such family.
Intent and motive are two subtly different concepts, and perhaps someone with expertise in criminal law could speak more clearly than I on the distinction, and perhaps how it applies to the hate crime laws.
Show me one case where a minority perp has been charged with a hate crime against a white.
I live in NY state. How come Colin Ferguson, the black guy who shot & killed several people on a Long Island commuter train because, in his own words, he hated white people, was never charged with hate crime? Why was it that his lawyer, ultra-liberal William Kuntsler, actually tried to get him off with the so-called “Black rage” defense (IOW the exact opposite of HCL)?
I’ll tell you why. Because HCL is not based on valid legal or constitutional concepts. In fact, it is completely and utterly invalidated by them. It is based on emotion, liberal guilt, and political correctness. Nothing more…
I am certain I’ve read of such cases – but I’ll leave that to our intrepid Googlers and legal whizzes.
Why? Because Kuntsler is a competent and ethical lawyer, who undertakes his duties seriously – and because in his judgment that was the best approach to take in order to defend his client. Remember that an attorney for someone is charged with doing the best job he can for his client and his interests, not with being the best theoretician of law regardless of consequences to his client. A strong conservative lawyer, sincere in his belief that “we gotta get tough on crime” and very much pro-death penalty, appointed by the court to defend a man who appears to have committed a particularly heinous murder, is nonetheless expected to try to establish that man’s innocence, or at minimum culpability of a much lesser charge, regardless of his personal feelings on the matter.
In other words, you don’t care one whit about the discussion in this thread, and are not in the slightest interested in whether any of the arguments hold water – you know you’re right, and would prefer not to be confused with the facts.
Nice. Now head over to the BBQ Pit, where you can make remarks like that with impunity. Around here, we try to give reasons for our opinions, ones that stand a chance of changing our opponents’ minds.
Painting graffitti on an overpass is not the same as painting graffitti on the door of a private place of worship.
Now, would painting “Death to Zionist pigs” on an overpass, warrant a more severe punishment than painting “I love Becky Sue” on an overpass?
I say, “NO!”
“Thought crimes” are straight out of Orwell’s “1984”
“Competent”?? Maybe, but “ethical”, when using the “Black rage” defense? I don’t call that ethical.
Anyways, Kuntsler’s defense is not the point that Hail Ants was alluding to. It was the prosecution’s call to charge Ferguson with a hate-crime. They chose not to, even though Ferguson made statements that warranted the charge.
I believe that if a white man did what Ferguson did, the prosecution would have charged him with a hate-crime.
My point, Razorsharp, is that a lawyer who undertakes the defense of a criminal case is obliged to present what is in his informed opinion the best possible defense for his client. If he is ethically or emotionally unable to do so, he should seek his client’s and the judge’s permission to withdraw from the case.
I concede your point that the prosecution should probably have made the hate-crime charge – but I was addressing Hail Ants’s criticism of Kuntsler, not debating the case as a whole.
Because Ferguson committed the shootings in 1993, and New York State didn’t have hate crime legislation until 2000.
I used to think so, but if you re-read 1984 I think you will see that “thoughtcrime” referred to political thought which dissented from the “truth” of Big Brother. Winston even had to control his face so that he wouldn’t betray the slightest hint that he disagreed with what he was seeing or hearing from the telescreen. In that story, hatred was not an issue. Everyone was kept in such a state of fear that hatred could scarcely take root.
I’ve seen some pretty good arguments here for HCL, although I must admit I’m still uncomfortable with the idea. Earlier in this thread someone (forgive me for not reviewing the entire thread now) seemed to be making the point that hate tended to make the degree of a crime greater (or severity, expressed as degree). That may be so, but in practice isn’t degree of a crime at least as often used as a bargaining tool to get some kind of conviction as it is to increase punishment for an already heinous crime?
It’s pretty hard to keep emotion out of a debate like this, so, even though I see Poly’s point I’m still sympathetic to Hail Ants’ mini-rant.
Boiled down, I’ve pretty much accepted HCL as “what is,” even though I can’t agree that it’s “what should be.”
Well, motive is taken into consideration in the commission of crimes like murder–wouldn’t selecting a crime victim because of race or engaging in a criminal act against someone solely because of race go straight to motive?
Also, I don’t understand what opponents of hate crime laws are really advocating. If you’re not committing a hate crime, what do you have to fear? That minorities will accuse you of such things? If so, is it the notion of being punished additionally that is the problem? Again, if you’re not committing an illegal act in the first place, what do you have to fear?
The assumption here, too, is that only minorities are victims of hate crimes. The statutes I’ve read make no distinction of what race the victim or perpetrator must be to be involved in a hate crime.
As is the same with hate-crime legislation, which is a government (Big Brother) construct, and its application is dependent on one’s thoughts.
“Thoughtcrime” was not necessarily limited to “political thought”, but any violation of Big Brother’s version of “truth”. Kinda like how one, today, can be ostracized for having thoughts that violate the doctrine of “political correctness”.
Really? I’ve seen a lot of acceptance of a wide variety of views. What I don’t see accepted, are views that say, in essence, “My way of doing things is the only right way, and needs to be enforced so that others do things my way.”
YMMV
I know that a lot of the people who support HCL, both here and in general, do so with the best of intentions. But you know what they say about good intentions.
And my point about Kuntsler is that if you give them an inch a lawyer will not only take a mile, they’ll take a lightyear! Laws must be clear, specific and reasonably well defined. And you can’t do that with HCL because at their core they are based on an emotion, hate. And like it or not you cannot make hate a crime. But that is exactly where HCL will lead to. Prosecuting hate crimes, then hate speech, hate behavior, and eventually feeling hate itself.
How can it not? What you’d be prosecuting along with someone’s actions is their emotional state-of-mind. That along with assaulting someone they are guilty of the crime of hating them.
Basically, you’re an idiot. Someone else already explained to you why Colin Ferguson wasn’t charged with a hate crime. Please do a little research before you go trying to make claims. Not to mention the fact that "ultra-liberal William Kunstler " never actually used this defense was because Ferguson decided to represent himself (providing excellent material for a hilarious skit on SNL).
You can find info about all reported hate crimes here. The site is really slow, but the info should be obtainable. Since you asked about instances where hate crimes were commited against whites. According to this site (which based their numbers on the 1999 FBI Hate Crimes Report), 524 blacks were arrested and charged with a “hate crime” against whites. By comparison, 2,030 whites were arrested that year for “hate crimes” against blacks. If anything, it would seem (as the article mentions) that blacks are being disproportionatly charged with hate crimes. Must be a result of all those ultra-liberal judges.
You need to realize that HCL has nothing to do with the color. This is demonstrated by the fact that 87 blacks were arrested for hate crimes against other blacks that year. It is not about creating a protected class, it is about making a point that crimes in which the victim is chosen for based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity or disability deserve more scrutiny. Prosecution is typically reserved for those crimes which are intimidate an entire group of people. Sentencing guidelines don’t allow for certain crimes, like cross burning (in many areas), to be adjudicated in a manner that takes into consideration the intent of the person to intimidate and terrorize a group of people.
Right, hate crimes laws well inevitable lead to prosecuting “hate” itself. That is a ridiculous argument. A person’s state-of-mind is already taken into account in many circumstances. You keep missing the fact that the crime isn’t primarily directed at the victim. You are not being found guilty of hating “them” (the one person you assaulted), you are being punished for acting in a way that is meant to victimize everyone who shares the same race, disability, etc. as the person you acted against.
The one coherent point that you do make is that the laws must be clear and well defined. I think everyone would agree with that. Many critics of “hate crimes” laws say legislation is written in such a way that authorities often have too much arbitrary power to decide whether a crime had a racial undertone. While that is a concern, it seems to me that that is an issue pertaining to prosecutorial discretion rather than with a fundamental flaw in the principle of elevating hate crimes above others.
You make the point that transparent articulation is impossible. I disagree. In most of the publicized cases I have read about, the intent of the perpetrator was fairly obvious. There are very few innocuous reasons to burn a cross on someone’s lawn, or call them a nigger as you are assaulting them. OF course there are situations that are more opaque, but thats why we have lawyers using their best judgement to make those calls.
Your argument, as I see it, boils down to not wanting emotions involved in the justice system. Even if we operate under the assumption that HCL is based on emotion, those laws are not alone in that basis. In fact, our legal system would need a dramartic overhaul if you wanted to disregard emotions, state-or-mind, or intent.