Please forgive me if this topic has already been explored. I have tried the search and it took so long it timed out.
Here’s the question: Why is a hate crime worse than any other crime?
The general consensus among those who support hate crime legislation is that a hate crime is actually two crimes in one:
The first crime, of course, is whatever the criminal actually did - murder, rape, vandalize, intimidate, etcetera.
The second crime is that they used the original crime to intimidate an entire class of people - Jews, African Americans, homosexuals, or others.
For instance, a murder that occurs during a bar fight has very little effect outside of the death itself. However, when the Klu Klux Klan murders an African American, it is with the express reason to intimidate and threaten other African Americans. Those kind of fear tactics can ultimately be used to deprive a class of people of their civil rights.
I’m undecided about the topic. I think there are genuine reasons to address the motivation of a crime, and yes, I think that some murders are worse than others. However, I don’t know that Federal legislation is the best answer. I don’t have a better answer to offer, mind you. I’m just not completely thrilled with the options on the table.
I’m of the opinion that all people are equal. All people’s lives are are of equal worth.
Hate is hate. Making it a crime to hate a specific type of person is coming dangerousy close to legislating free speech.
I personally don’t want the government looking at political, religous, racial or any other “belief” when they are looking at a crime.
Murder is murder.
I think someone that decides to terrorize anybody, and possibly hurt or kill them, needs to be put away for a long time.
The focus needs to be on the physica crime, not the thought.
Thought police are worse than hate.
Motivation is an issue that should be considered at sentencing. Hatred should no more be criminalized than any other class of thought. Acts may be criminal. Motivations may compell society that one is beyond rehabilitation and requires a longer/lifelong period of imprisonment.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
I am against hate crimes for four reasons:
[list=1][li]Equal Protection Under The Law - When this country was founded, what made us different (and good, IMHO) was that princes and paupers were treated the same whether victims or perpetrators of a crime. Hate Crime Laws take this away.[/li][li]Redundancy - Anything that can be construed a Hate Crime is already on the books. Instead of adding more legalistic clutter, let’s just enforce those laws already on the books to the highest point of law.[/li][li]Lack Of Deterence - Some of the crimes that are considered hate crimes, even if they did not have Hate as a motive, are already punishable by the death panalty. If the threat of death is not a deterant, what do we do next? Advocate torture?[/li][li]The Misapplication Of Laws - Already in some jurisdictions where Hate Crime Laws are on the books, what I feel are grievous misapplications of them have already taken place.[/li]
In Canada, a Christian was arrested for handing out anti-Muslim flyers under the Hate Crime Laws there alone. (Meanwhile, the rhetoric on the flyers was printed in the local daily newspaper in part or in full). In New York, a person who was in a simple bsr fight had the incident become a hate crime because the victim was another race, and investigators found that the accussed made racial jokes… in his workplace, independent of the crime scene itself! And in Chicago (I think), someone was subjected to both criminal AND civil charges for making a call to a lawyer’s office and leaving racial remarks on the machine.[/list=1]
I say we should punish every offender to the letter of the law when their guilt is established beyond reasonable doubt. If someone kills someone, it doesn’t matter if it’s because they wanted their wallet or they didn’t like that person’s race or sexual orientation. That person is still dead.
Yer pal,
Satan
Motivation is taken into consideration on some crimes (Murder, manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter).
Rationally, I see the catagory of hate crimes as another way to seperate and spotlight ethnic differences
Emotionally, I see it as a great tool for revenge, just like the death penalty.
Our court system should not be in the revenge business, so on this issue I side with the conservatives.
Teacher, my red crayon tastes funny – Ralph Wiggum
To Satan: I’m not quite clear on how your first point works… how does a hate crime law discriminate between “princes and paupers”? I don’t see how this kind of legislation encourages class distinctions.
To the topic: I don’t see why consideration of ‘hate’ in a criminal motive is such a big issue. In the USA, as I understand it, you already have various “degrees” of murder, depending on things like premeditation, ie, whether it was coldblooded or not. This is, from a certain point of view, all to do with motive. If you’re willing to distinguish between coldblooded, deliberate murder and murder in anger, then there’s not much of a problem going the next step and considering if the crime was propelled by hatred.
I believe that the aspect of hate DOES make a crime more dangerous, as mentioned above, it targets an entire group as a secondary effect. And seeing as hate is so often a function of ignorance… well, IMHO when ignorance gets so bad it results in criminal activity, the law needs to step in, and specifically combat this sort of thing.
BJ
I’m iffy on the subject as well, but I never saw it phrased in such a way.
So, if not hate crimes legislation, what about charging someone with murder and terrorism, or some such charge?
For example, in your KKK scenario, there would clearly be murder, but there would also be the possibility of the additional items you mentioned, intimidation and causing threat. If not charged as a hate crime, would two charges be acceptable?
Now, in the case of Matthew Shepard, that’s not as clear-cut - the case was not a cause celebre until after, so it isn’t clear whether they meant the bashing to be a form of intimidation to other gays and lesbians.
Thoughts?
Esprix
Considering less serious crimes like vandalism:
Is it just as bad to spray “jeff roolz” or some such tripe on somebody’s car or house as it is to spray words expressing hatred for that person on the basis of their race, religion, sexuality or whatever?
Is not the distress caused likely to be much greater in the second case than in the first, not only to the “direct” victim but to anybody else who falls into the same category who lives in the neighbourhood and sees it or hears about it.
Not only is more extreme distress likely to be caused, the action is intended to cause that level of distress.
You are correct, Tom, but if we remove the right to express thoughts that cause distress to others then we freedom of expression is an immediate casualty. A number of our country’s founders were pamphleteers who made a habit of expressing ideas that caused distress to a subset of their fellow citizens. Punish the act, abhor the thought, but protect the expression. Anything else makes a mockery of intellectual freedom.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
As to degrees of murder, etc.
Motive is often an element of the crime. In that case, the only question is whether a motive can be proven, the characteristics of that motive are not an element of the crime.
Naturally, in teh real world judges and juries might react to the specific nature of a motive. If they allow this to color their perception of the facts, then they fail in their duties. If they take it into account during sentencing, then they are properly exercising the human discretion that is necessary for a legal system to make any claim to justice.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
Spiritus, It’s not the right to express the thoughts that’s being removed. You don’t have the right to express your thoughts in spraypaint on the side of your neighbour’s house.
I’m talking about situations in which what is being done is already a crime. Consider the difference between:
(a) handing out anti-semitic leaflets outside a synagogue;
(b) writing “jeff roolz” on the wall of a synagogue; and
© drawing a swastika on the wall of a synagogue.
My contention is that (a) should be protected as free speech; (b) should be prosecuted as more or less minor vandalism and © should be prosecuted as a hate crime.
The difference in intention between (b) and © is so completely different that I think they should be prosecuted as different offences.
There is no difference in intention between (a) and © at all, but (a) enjoys legitimate legal protection and © does not.
I have to side against hate crimes as special laws. after all, if I beat you to a bloody pulp, do you suppose that it’s just my little way of saying “I LOVE YOU”?
All violent crimes are hate crimes.
(and if you don’t agree with me, I’ll beat you to a bloody pulp)
Bucky
Oh, well. We can always make more killbots.
Eventually, all hate-crime legislation will ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, as often happens with politically motivated laws.(laws that serve no purpose other than to make a law-maker look good.
“Murder is murder”
—Freedom
Freedom and I agree on this one. Sort of, anyway. One of the “special circumstances” for murder in California is to kill a cop.
I do feel that to hunt someone down and beat the shit out of him/her because of a perceived peculiarity about that person should carry extra penalty.
Peace,
mangeorge
I only know two things;
I know what I need to know
And
I know what I want to know
Mangeorge, 2000
Satan:
The phrase “equal protection of the laws” didn’t become part of the Constitution until 1868. Prior to and after that, perpetrators were not treated the same under law. We didn’t have princes or paupers, but we had masters and slaves, and they certainly did not receive the same treatment under the law.
The USSC has already ruled on this aspect of bias crimes, in [RAV vs City of St Paul (505 US 377 (1992))](http://www4.law.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/htm_hl?DB=SupctSyllabi&STEMMER=en&WORDS=bia+&COLOUR=Red&STYLE=s&URL=http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/90-7675.ZS.html#muscat_highligh ter_first_match). Under that ruling and decades of 1st Amendment jurisprudence, the above action would be constitutionally protected.
Bucky:
I oppose hate crimes legislation, but I really REALLY loathe this argument against them. All violent crimes are not hate crimes. Mugging is not a hate crime. Manslaughter is often not a hate crime. Assault is often not a hate crime. There is a cifference between anger and hate.
Spooje:
The USSC has already ruled in [Wisconsin v Mitchell (508 US 47 (1993))](http://www4.law.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/htm_hl?DB=SupctSyllabi&STEMMER=en&WORDS=bia+&COLOUR=Red&STYLE=s&URL=http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/92-515.ZS.html#muscat_highlight er_first_match) that penalty enhancements for hate crimes are not a violation of the First Amendment.
Crap. Sorry to goof up the margins, y’all. If some kind and generous moderator can figure out what I did wrong in my coding and fix it for me (then delete this post as superfluous) I’d be ever so grateful.
Tom:
I understand the argument you make. I even sympathize with the example you have chosen, but I feel the principal of free expression is far too important to subjugate it to any political litmus test. And that is what all hate crime statutes reduce to – a litmus test for attitudes that teh majority feels are acceptable at any given time. If the act is criminal, then penalize the act. If the motivation is offensive, then a judge and jury have the ability to make the punishment as harsh as teh law allos for the act. If we allow punishment of the thought, then the first ammendment becomes a hollow promise. It is never popular speech that requires protection.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
My boyfriend has worked as a lobbyist previously for the health care field, but is a staunch supporter of hate crimes legislation, and he brought up an interesting point.
Laramie, Wyoming, had to lay off four police officers due to the financial strain of the trials surrounding the Matthew Shepard murder. However, the Texas town where the Byrd killing was held didn’t. Why? Because the Byrd trial was considered a hate crime, and received federal funds; Shepard’s was not, so they didn’t.
What are the federal hate crime laws on the books right now? We didn’t have time to get into specifics.
Esprix
Spiritus, I’m not saying that hate crimes should necessarily be treated as different offences, or even as different categories of the same offence. I think that the judge should be allowed to take the fact that it is a hate crime into account as an aggravating factor, just as he could punish an excessively violent assault more severely than a minor assault. But essentially, I agree with you: “jeff roolz” gets the lower end of the scale of sentences for vandalism and the swastika gets the higher end.
The OP asked why hate crimes were worse, and that was the question I was trying to address, rather than whether or not they should be different offences.