Maybe it was a Hate-Crime

Great Debates
181

Perhaps not equivocation, but we’re using the word in different ways. You’re taking the word “accident” to mean “an event that arose through no one’s fault.” I’m just using the word “accident” to mean simply “car wreck” irrespective of fault, intent or motive, as in “the driver intentionally caused an accident.” Incidentally, dctionary dot com had a third definition:

“c. An instance of involuntary urination or defecation in one’s clothing” :slight_smile:

At any rate, I take it by your post that you think intent is irrelevant and that both should be treated the same, since punishing a motive is punishing them for their evil. I disagree. Motive can be indicative of whether a person presents a continuing danger to society, and thus merits a greater punishment. Somebody who negligently causes someone’s death may never present such a danger again, whereas somebody who tortures someone to death almost certainly will. Just for clarification, by the way when you say both owe “life”, do you mean anyone who causes the death of another should spend their life in prison, or do you mean that because they took a life their life is now forfeit, i.e. death penalty?

Also: if I understand you, intent and motive is irrelevant, and the punishment should be weighed solely by the harm caused. Should someone who steals because they and their family are starving be treated the same as someone who steals for gain? Should someone who steals a medicine to save the life of their spouse be treated the same as someone who steals the same medicine to sell on the black market?

182

by Libertarian

I could see this kind of philosophy, if turned into policy, really complicating (and compromising) justice in the courtroom.

Yeah, giving a life sentence to someone driving under the influence is probably ethically justifiable. It’s easy to judge them harshly. But let’s say a kid got killed by a DUI driver smashing into the back of the car he/she was a passenger in, and it was soon determined that the child was not wearing a seatbelt. Should the adults riding in the car be given life sentences, too?

What about the bartender who knew the drunk driver was probably a little more than tipsy when he left the bar? Should she/he be convicted of murder for being negligent in not stopping them?

What about the driver’s drinking friends? Certainly they had a hand in this because they failed to stop him from driving home. Should they go to jail for life?

What if the driver was underaged and purchased alcohol from the local liquor shop? He looked over the age of 21, so the clerk neglected to card him. Should he be found guilty of first degree murder as well?

I deliberately have chosen scenarios that are not far-fetched and hyperbolic; everyone I mentioned does carry some culpability. I just don’t think your idea of justice is fair or does anyone any good. Afterall, a dead person is still dead no matter how many other people have their lives taken away. The debt that the criminal “owes” can never be paid.

183

I think it does the opposite. It makes degree critical because the degree to which rights have been usurped is precisely the degree to which they must be restored. Most of the questions that you’re asking (and all of the questions that Face is asking) have to do with the criminal and his culpability for the crime. But that is not the focus of my philosophy. The focus is the victim. There’s no point in making up hypotheticals and addressing them because if we all start supposing this and that, we can always add something or modify something in a practically infinite matrix of possibilities. (And I presume that I get to suppose just as you do.) And in fact, for any arbitrary philosophy or system — including the present one — we can all hypothesize scenarios from the ordinary to the far-fetched that really don’t answer anything at all. Your system is as vulnerable to what-ifs as any other. The same problems you perceive in my philosophy exist in your own. Mine is not a utopian philosophy at all. It does not pretend to be the solution for all injustice, nor a panacea for all ills. It is merely a different set of principles to apply to the same things that arise irrespective of the system in which the arise. There is indeed a continuum of carefulness, but I believe that the best way to approach analyzing that continuum is with the interests of the victim at the center of thought. The same standard of reasonableness used in any court would apply: what might a reasonable person have done, if anything, to avoid causing harm? It really doesn’t matter whether it was a tiny thing like forgetting to fix your brakes or a big thing like blowing up the guy’s car. Either way, he has a broken neck and a wrecked vehicle. You must restore him.

184

No. Murder does not go toward restoring the victim’s estate and is therefore not appropriate force. It means that the rest of the criminal’s life is for the benefit of his victim’s heirs. What he took was all that the victim had, and so that is what he has forfeited. To usurp rights is to waive your own. I disagree that negligence indicates that a person is likely not to re-offend; in fact, it is possible that his negligence is a character trait of chronic carelessness.

185

I think you with the face does raise an important question, however: how do you handle situations of multiple culpability? That’s not necessarily saying there’s a fatal flaw in your system, just that how to handle such cases isn’t immediately obvious.

And what about cases in which the victim is partially culpable? Is it an all-or-nothing thing (either the victim is sufficiently culpable that she receives no restitution, or she’s insufficiently culpable and receives full restitution), or is it graduated (the victim, being 20% culpable, receives 80% restitution)?

If an example is helpful, Mrs. Piggle, being a little tipsy, runs her car off the road and into a (privately owned) fire hydrant. She’s not going very quickly, only 20 miles an hour; still, her car was manufactured by an unscrupulous bastard who, contrary to the manufacturer’s ads, placed the gas tank right under the front bumper. The car explodes in flames, causing third degree burns all over her body.

Is Mrs. Piggle entitled to restitution? We assume that were she not deceived about the car’s manufacture, she would not have purchased it; we also assume that had she not gotten tipsy, she would not have wrecked the car. Let’s give her 50% culpability.

If the example is useless, that’s fine, but I’m still interested in the answers to the
questions in the first two paragraphs.

Daniel

186

Presently, there are more than a million (often conflicting) rules, laws, and regulations that a courtroom must keep in mind when dispensing justice. It is hard to imagine a more complicated state of affairs. My philosophy offers a single principle that is at the heart of every interpretation, namely that every individual has a right to be free from the initial force and deception of all others. I think it greatly simplifies matters.

187

Well, give me time, please. This isn’t Data typing here; it’s me! :smiley:

All who are culpable must restore the victim. It doesn’t matter to what degree they are culpable. What matters is that the victim be restored. If your house is ransacked and several things are stolen, I don’t think it matters to you (other than as intellectual interest) what were the circumstances of the thieves. What matters to you is getting compensation for your property. The guy who waits outside to yell if someone comes by is equally as culpable as the guy who goes in with a sack. There is no such thing in my philosophy as “partial culpability”. Mrs. Piggy, in deciding to drive drunk, has taken upon herself the responsibility for what happens when she does so (assuming the road’s owner forbids drunk driving). Only if she has no culpability may she blame someone else.

188

Is it unreasonable to want to wait until Saturday morning to get your brakes fixed, but have an accident on Friday night going home? Are we all to be experts in auto repair, to realize that the sponginess we felt on Friday morning, was more than worn brake shoes, but actually a hole in the brake lines?

Let’s take this to it’s logical conclusion, for me anyways. If NO MATTER what the circumstances, if I kill someone, my life is forfeit; then I have nothing to lose.

People with nothing left to lose are very dangerous.

If my bad brakes hit someone, then I better MAKE sure he’s dead. Why bother taking him to the hospital, where if he dies in front of witnesses, I become a criminal and my life is now for the benefit of the victims’ heirs?

Isn’t that why I have car insurance? Isn’t that why the victim should have life insurance to protect his family from an accident with bad brakes?

If there is no difference in punishment between my accidentally hitting him with my car, and my then backing the car over him to make sure he’s dead, then why bother being ‘humane’? It’s in my best interest to see him dead…it’s the same price no matter what. The way the laws are set up now, it’s in my best interest to at least attempt to save his life, not leave him on the side of the road.

If say the victim never made more than $15,000 in his 50 years, why can’t I just give his family $15,000 x 20. What if the victim had brain cancer was going to die in 3 years anyway? Do I still owe the heirs my 60 years of remaining life or do I only do the 3 years, no matter how or why I killed him?

189

No problem on the time thing–I’m just asking questions as they occur to me.

First, you may want to reconsider that parenthetical about “assuming the road’s owner forbids drunk driving”–otherwise, if the car explodes when the plastered Piggle is driving at 110 miles an hour, the manufacturer can’t point to that as contributing to the accident. This seems to be a matter between Piggle and the carmaker, not involving the road’s owner. (The owner may make a separate case against Piggle for the destruction of the hydrant, natch).

Second, given the robbery of the house, is everyone who contributes individually responsible for providing me full compensation, or collectively responsible? That is, five people conspire to steal $1000 from me and get caught. DOes each person owe me $200 or $1000?

If it’s collective responsibility, how does that work in the case of a death?

Third, this makes crime look like a great idea. If you’re caught, you pay back what you took; if you’re not caught, you’re golden. With no punitive measures, there’s not much risk to committing nonviolent property crime.

Daniel

190

Excuse me for interrupting the hijack, but I just wanted to thank Dead Badger and mhendo for their fine work in this thread. Your work with the statistics and your consistent ability to explain them so even an idiot like me could follow them is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise fetid swamp of misinformation in this thread. Thanks guys.

191

by Lib

[quote]
My philosophy offers a single principle that is at the heart of every interpretation, namely that every individual has a right to be free from the initial force and deception of all others. I think it greatly simplifies matters.**

I think that is the problem, though. By applying a “one shoe fits all” philosophy to justice, you end up compromising it. Of course this is my opinion and yours is yours. I just don’t see how you could prefer a world where intent is immaterial and that justice is only seen as a way to “payback” what the victim lost. Especially when intangibles are involved. How does a rape victim retrieve their lost “property”?

If someone is killed, it is impossible to restore them. Nothing is going to bring them back. Taking someone else’s life and locking them up in prison is not going to make the victim suddenly regain existence. If you look at death as the loss of potential property, how exactly does a murderer pay that back if they don’t have any property themselves? And if the murderer happens to be very rich and is able to pay the victim’s heirs with what is equivalent to the cost of the victim’s life, should payment of their debt allow them to walk the streets, posing a risk to society? If so, the government could then be charged with negligence the next time this person murders somebody, especially if they had compelling evidence that the perp was liable to be a repeat offender.

This is what I mean when I said that justice (my interpretation of it) will be complicated. Take any crime or accident, analyze it enough, and you’re liable to find lots of people involved who, had they be perfectly careful and non-negligent, could have stopped the event from happenening. Including the victim themselves. That doesn’t mean they are as deserving of the same sentence as the person who actually slit the person’s throat.

I agree with holmes. Under your system, you are giving people a big disincentive for acting morally. And because you view human beings in terms of property, you are putting a price on life. Those with practically unlimited supplies of money can in theory get away with murder.

192

by Lib

I think that is the problem, though. By applying a “one shoe fits all” philosophy to justice, you end up compromising it. Of course this is my opinion and yours is yours. I just don’t see how you could prefer a world where intent is immaterial and that justice is only seen as a way to “payback” what the victim lost. Especially when intangibles are involved. How does a rape victim retrieve their lost “property”?

If someone is killed, it is impossible to restore them. Nothing is going to bring them back. Taking someone else’s life and locking them up in prison is not going to make the victim suddenly regain existence. If you look at death as the loss of potential property, how exactly does a murderer pay that back if they don’t have any property themselves? And if the murderer happens to be very rich and is able to pay the victim’s heirs with what is equivalent to the cost of the victim’s life, should payment of their debt allow them to walk the streets, posing a risk to society? If so, the government could then be charged with negligence the next time this person murders somebody, especially if it had compelling evidence that the perp was liable to be a repeat offender.

This is what I mean when I said that justice (my interpretation of it) will be complicated. Take any crime or accident, analyze it enough, and you’re liable to find lots of people involved who, had they be perfectly careful and non-negligent, could have stopped the event from happenening. Including the victim themselves. That doesn’t mean they are as deserving of the same sentence as the person who actually slit the person’s throat.

I agree with holmes. Under your system, you are giving people a big disincentive for acting morally. And because you view human beings in terms of property, you are putting a price on life. Those with practically unlimited supplies of money can in theory get away with murder.

193

Look, relying on the statistics provided, I have no other choice. Yes, there are other factors to consider, such as the geographical demographics as well as single or multiple offenders. But, my assuming that every crime is committed by a different criminal, is no more “stupid” than your assumption that all hate crimes suffered by blacks are perpetrated by whites, which we know is not the case, because in the FBI statistics, so-called Hispanics are lumped in with whites. For you to chastise my analysis as “stupid” for failing to use data that is not provided is disengenuous and is a revelation into your character.

Well, I really don’t know what is is that you are getting at. Factoring in the population twice?? The equation I used was proper for determining the interracial crime rate for both the black and white populations. Now, I admit, rather than saying:

I could have sugercoated it a little by saying that the black-on-white rate of crime is 52 times greater than the white-on-black rate of crime.

Now, if you want to get into stupidity, let’s examine this:

Just what is it in your mind that equates a victim of a hate crime with a random victim of crime? Victims of hate crimes have been targeted, not at random, but selectively. Now that I have cleared that up for you, let’s have another look at the hate crime statistics.

1,226 black on white
2,988 white on black

211,460,626 white population
34,658,190 black population

You want percentages? Okay.

86% (whites) commit 70% of all hate crimes. Statistically, whites are under represented.
14% (blacks) commit 30% of all hate crimes. Statistically, blacks are over represented.

Now, let’s look at the hate crime rate.

Whites commit one hate crime for every 70,770 whites in the population.
Blacks commit one hate crime for every 28,270 blacks in the population.

The Black rate of hate crimes is 2.5 times greater that the white rate. (And remember, Hispanics, for some unexplained reason, are counted as white). Funny thing about that, ask a Hispanic if they consider themselves to be white, and, if you are lucky, you’ll just get a funny look.

Now, lets examine media portrayal. Specifically, the entertainment media. Would you honestly say that the entertainment media’s portrayal of hate crime has whites being the perpetrators 70% of the time, or do you think it may be a little higher than that? Remember, I said “honestly”.

Yes, and perhaps that’s why someone like you considers it “fine work”.

194

Bwahahahahaha.

This is absolutely priceless.

You’re accusing Dead Badger of exactly what you’ve been doing for this whole thread–conflating random, interracial crime with hate crime.

You have not a scintilla of evidence that Justice Souter was targetted because he was white. You have not a scintilla of evidence that the Carr Brothers’ victims were targetted because they were white. Yet you continue to insist that these were hate crimes.

Once more, for the dummies:

Not all interracial crimes are hate crimes.

195

You’re exactly right, it’s just one of the tactics used to discredit a point of view that contradicts the favored ideology.

And then there is the tactic of insisting that irrelevant questions be answered, but then ignoring the answer.

Okay, where’s the dispute?

196

Still swingin’ at that strawman, I see. I got some bad news for you. You’re gettin’ whipped.

It’s the media’s presentation that’s the issue. I realize that you keep grasping at the hate crime straw, but give it up, the roots are out of the ground on that weed.

Here’s a clue, you have no moral authority to refer to anyone as a dummy.

197

Two things:

  1. You used the term “hate crime” no fewer than four times in your own OP. If it’s only a “weed,” then it’s one that you planted.

  2. Any chance you have of proving your case about the media’s presentation of interracial crime relies on you being able to demonstrate a pattern of behavior that you have so far conspicuously failed to uncover. Remember, four cases (which is all you have) do not constitute a reasonable sample.

Furthermore, even in those four cases you have employed enough mere speculation and unfounded assertion to cast doubt on your sense of proportion and your reasoning abilities. And in the key case, the attack on Justice Souter, you haven’t provided a single scrap of evidence that the media’s silence on the issue of race is in any way relevant.

If you remember, one news outlet, The Washington Times, did tell us the race of the assailants. Now, let’s have a look at what the DC Police told The Washington Times, and then compare it with your own assertion.

and

There you have it folks. Straight from the horse’s mouth.

The title of this thread is “Maybe it was a Hate-Crime,” and the police comments demonstrate that, even by the OP’s own definition, it was not.

So, given that all the evidence suggests that this was in fact just a random mugging, why should the media spend a whole bunch of time investigating the race of the assailants?

198

You are still telling the same lie. How does that go? If you tell a lie often enough…

I have done nothing more than to suggest that if the races of the perpetrators were reversed, the media would be insinuating the existance of a hate crime.

What I said was, if Justice Thomas had been mugged by several young white men, the media would have mentioned the race of the attackers, thus insinuating a bias, or hate crime without having to specifically say so.

For the Carr brothers, I said that if the Carr bros. had been white and their victims black, the murders would have received more extensive national coverage. The message would have been conveyed without the media even mentioning “hate”.

So, why would the media report that white racists were burning black churches, without even a “scintilla of evidence”?

Do you remember that “whooosh” sound just over your head when you first read that?

199

“Cleveland, Ohio… A white man on a moped accidentally bumped into a truck being driven by a black man. He fell over but was not injured. A crowd of 40 white people pulled the black driver from the truck and brutally beat him. One of them climbed in the truck and ran over the driver, killing him. The crowd cheered.”

"Jacksonville, Florida… A group of four to six white men agreed that they would brutalize the next black person they saw walking down the street. That person turned out to be a mentally disabled 50-year-old, whom they beat and stomped into unconsciousness. He later died of his injuries. "

“Are you surprised that you’ve never heard of these sickening murders based on racial hatred? You didn’t see saturation coverage on the news. You didn’t hear politicians decrying racism. You didn’t see a livid Jesse Jackson on CNN. Why? Because these acts of brutality didn’t happen exactly as I described above. Oh, they happened, all right. The only thing is, the races of the attackers and victims were reversed. That is, a white man was beaten and then crushed by a mob of 40 black people who were furious that a black man bumped into his truck.¹ In Jacksonville, it was a gang of black men who stomped a mentally-disabled man to death solely because he was white.²”

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200

And again you demonstrate your idiocy.

The link you provide does indeed tell us about some black-on-white hate crimes. And did you look at the bottom of the story to see where the information comes from? Imagine that, but it comes from the same media that you deride for not mentioning hate crimes.

A roll call of newspapers in the footntoes includes:

Florida Times-Union
Chicago Tribune
Asbury Park Press
Miami Herald
Denver Rocky Mountain News
Jefferson City News Tribune
New York Post
Washington Post
Washington Times

Everything from small-town papers to major city broadsheets.

In fact, in one of the cases it was that evil liberal paper, The Washington Post, that exposed that fact that some people were covering up the race of the offender:

So, some people certainly did try to cover up the offender’s race. But the media exposed those people and made public the racial issues relevant to the case.

Care to try again with your media conspiracy theory?