The U.S. Supreme Court and Hate Crimes.

Great Debates
21

The poorly thought out logic of this set of statements is hard to fully describe.

First of all, I defy you to find where in the United States Constitution your “thoughts” are protected. Your ability to speak ideas is protected to a limited extent, but not your thoughts in any degree.

Second of all, the First Amendment (neither directly, or through application via the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause) does not protect your right to encite criminal behavior. Thus, you could not stand on the street corner and say, “Go kill the fags, everyone” and have the “free speech” right protect you. So the very activity that would be punished more severely as a hate crime cannot be advocated with protection.

Which forces us to examine the idea of what in particular is being punished by hate crime statutes. What is being punished is not that you have an opinion that a particular group should be discriminated against. What is being punished is the decision to intentionally inflict a crime upon a person as a result of their status, where that status is specially protected. Thus, were I to go to a bar, tell everyone very loudly, “I think all Ay-rabs should get the fuck out of the country!” then head out and shortly after beat up a person whom I thought was Arab, if I have committed a “hate crime,” it’s not because I think Arabs should leave, or even because I don’t like Arabs. It’s because I selected an person to beat up on the basis that I thought they were Arabic.

Thus, you aren’t being punished extra for any thought process that, translated to speech, would be protected by the First Amendment.

Finally, the fact that we punish someone more for the fact they killed someone, for example, as a result of a “hate crime” doesn’t mean we devalue any other reason for killing someone. As has been pointed out in the excerpt from the opinion of the Supreme Court, the rationale for punishing the crime more harshly isn’t that we think killing someone for this reason is worse than killing someone for any other reason. Rather, we punish you more severely because we recognize that the action in the “hate crime” isn’t just bad because of what it does to the individual victim, but also because of what it does to our society. And in that thought process, yes, it’s worse to kill someone because you picked them out for being [fill in the blank with protected classification], rather than in order to take their $4. Similarly, it’s usually worse to kill someone because you were drunk behind the wheel, or because you used a more forbidden weapon, or because you were engaged in specific types of criminal enterprise, etc. Laws make that distinction all the time.

22

Ignore my first sentence in that last post. True or not, it’s not something that should start out a rational argument. I blame my dislike of 15 degree weather. :frowning:

23

Be fair. The laws have changed in the last generation, and they now provide extra punishment where they didn’t before. That’s definitely a slope.

Now, it might be good or bad, it might be slippery or not…

24

The First Amendment defines speech pretty broadly; it covers things like writing, artworks, rude gestures, interpretive dance, etc. But I don’t think anyone is going to claim that criminal acts are a form of expression that merits constitutional protection.

25

That’s what juries are for. They look at the evidence and decide whether the circumstances match the charges. If I’m getting drunk in bar with my buddies and say “let’s go out and beat up the first guy we see” and we happen to beat up a black victim then I might be able to convince a jury that I’m an asshole but not a racist asshole. But if the bartender testifies that I said “let’s go out and beat up the first black guy we see” then the jury’s probably going to decide I set out with the intent of commiting a hate crime.

26

Great example. I’m not totally convinced the second should be treated differently than the first.

27

Of course not. What these hate crime laws are doing is not only punishing the criminal acts (fine with me and most people) but adding an extra penalty, and that extra penalty is not for the underlying crime (which has already been addressed) but that extra penalty is applied SOLELY for a persons reason behind committing the crime. A reason which is protected under the first amendment as abhorrent as we may find it.

And again I would ask, is it worse to kill a person because you hate white people, or that you kill the same person because you want the 4 dollars in his pocket?

28

Of course it does. How can someone say otherwise. In the case you cited, the assault was normally a 2 year sentence, but because it was racially motivated it was a 7 year sentence.

Now, we can play games with the English language, but it is clear that Wisconsin feels that if I assault someone for a non-racial reason then, by the numbers, that assault is 3 and one half times “better” than an assault because he wore glasses and I hate 4 eyed fuckers.

It’s all a matter of perspective. You can say we punish all crimes equally, yet “enhance” the bad ones, or we can say we punish the “hate” crimes high and “devalue” the “lesser” ones. Either view is adequate, yet we choose our words carefully so that old men in robes can fall in lockstep with our latest outrage…

29

No, it’s punishing a crime more severly because of the motive for that crime. Which is a long accepted legal principle.

Hate crimes are essentially a version of terrorism. You attack individuals who belong to a group because you want to send a message to the entire group. It’s saying “I’m going to commit this type of crime against people like you if you don’t act the way I want.” It’s a direct physical attack on the individual victim and an indirect psychological attack of the entire group.

30

No matter how many times you say it, killing people because you hate their skin color is not protected under the First Amendment. The fact that you think it is, is…sad.

31

But take your example above. “let’s go out and beat up the first black guy we see” terrorizes a percent of the population. “let’s go out and beat up the first guy we see” terrorizes everyone, no?

32

Look, the issue is not whether it’s worse. If Kant and Hume and Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and Sartre and others can’t agree on what is objectively morally right, I don’t expect you to. The question is whether these types of laws are constitutionally permissible.

33

I never said that, and I don’t know why you keep repeating it. Premeditated killing of someone is not protected for any reason.

But if you enhance the penalties for killing someone BECAUSE of a reason that is protected under the 1st amendment, then that should be out of bounds.

34

I’m happy to concede that the factual question has been settled.

But it remains an open question (to me) whether these laws are reasonable or not.

35

Well, Key Lime Guy hit it on the head, but you had to spin it.

I’ll ask you: Is it constitutionally permissible to hate white people and wish they were dead?

And GFactor confuses me here. You are saying that the founders wanted freedom of speech, but a freedom of “thought” is not implied in that? What private thoughts can I have that you feel I should be prosecuted for?

And please don’t say, “If you act on those and murder someone…” I’m not talking about murder, I’m trying to separate the two to show that a person’s reason for murder is irrelevant in this context…

36

If I kill someone because they hit me with a bat I will likely get a lesser sentence than if I just kill a random person in cold blood. The reason for the killing is never irrelevant to the punishment.

37

If someone hits you with a bat, then they started the situation and if you overreacted then you might be a dimished punishment. Apples and oranges.

And what about Key Lime Guy’s argument. If you pick a name out of the phone book and kill him, then that terrorizes the whole population. If you pick out a random white guy, then that terrorizes a subset of the population.

Why is the latter worse? I know why; it is because in modern society we have decided that racist beliefs and thoughts are “bad”. I agree, but those “thoughts” are something that is protected.

38

Again, acting on them is not. We as a society may have to tolerate racist assholes and their racist thoughts but we can nail their ass to the wall when they act on them. NOTHING requires us to tolerate racist ACTS. Sure it is a value judgment but we can make those within the framework of the constitution.

Why do you fail to understand that simply because a skinhead racist neonazi kills a black guy or a jewish person does not subject them to more severe punishment. They are entitled to their beliefs. It is only when they ACT on those beliefs that they are subject to enhanced punishment.

39

It’s an aggravating factor to be taken into account when passing sentence, not a separate criminal count. Like premeditation.

40

There is nothing illegal about wanting a juror dead either. It is just as protected to want to see the jurors at your trial dead as it is to want to see to see all black people dead.

The legislature has determined that it is worse to kill a person because you hate hate white people.