Wrong thinking is punishable

Civil court and criminal court are two completely different things.

You can not be sent to jail as a penalty in a civil case. Civil cases are merely to gain (usually) monetary compensation for a wrong done to you. If you lose you do not get a criminal record. Also, the rules for determining guilt in a civil case are much more lax than in a criminal court. This is why OJ Simpson could be found innocent of murder in a criminal trial yet be found guilty in a civil trial and have to pay monetary damages.

Criminal court is society’s (not individuals) means of making people pay for some wrong they have committed…usually via a prison term and/or fines but other remedies exist such as public service. I’m not certain but I do not think a victim or victims family can ever gain money via a guilty ruling in a criminal case. They would need to sue in civil court for monetary damages and this has nothing to do with hate crime legislation.

**

I believe you. However, the thing to do in this case is to get the authorities do do their jobs. There is already recourse is, say, a police department is ignoring people claiming to be gay-bashed, for example. And it is already against the law to bet people up - whether they are gay or straight.

Get the police to enforce the laws already on the books.

After all, if cops are ignoring laws that are already on the books anyway, how are new laws that they can equally ignore going to help? And how would saying “take it to the national level” make those local jurisdictions any more accountable (i.e. better)?

**

The law differentiates on whether the crime was premeditated. A guy who plots to kill his wife will be treated differently than the guy who comes home, sees his wife in bed with another man, and lashes out accidentally killing her.

If someone does a crime because the victim is black, gay, or whatever, this shows premeditation (for the most part, individual cases are all different), so what this shows me is that someone who does use hate as a motivation for their actions are simply doing their crimes with premeditation, and they deserve the highest penalties accorded by the law.

Also, the heinousness of a crime is factored into sentences. Someone who killed his wife and tried to get out of town will probably not get as harsh a sentence as someone who chopped his wife into little bits and put her in the garbage disposal. That is human emotional response to something that most people would not find very “human.”

As such, I would like to believe that a crime which was premeditated and this motivation was only an irrational hate, that they would be sentenced to the highest letter of the law. And in jurisdictions where this doesn’t happen, we protest and make as much noise as we can that justice was not served.

But do we need additional laws to make justice? I hope not.

**

True, but those laws attempted to even the playing field, not to cause reverse descrimination. That’s a whole other debate (that we’ve had and will have again), so I don’t want to get into the ramifications of this in practice. However, the fact that some people have made complaints of reverse descrimination (Dubya railed about how "quotas are unamerican at one of the debates) shows me that Hate Crime Legislation would also raise the spectre of this. And if we can do something about the crimes without opening that box, I think that’s a much better course of action.

**
Glad to see you’re right for once. :wink:


Yer pal,
Satan

*I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Six months, three weeks, three days, 15 hours, 4 minutes and 8 seconds.
8305 cigarettes not smoked, saving $1,038.14.
Extra life with Drain Bead: 4 weeks, 20 hours, 5 minutes.

David B used me as a cite!*

I should have been clearer when explaining my hypothetical where every part of the judicial system was out to protect the criminal.

What I meant to show was that only one piece need to be faulty for this house of cards to come down. I know puddleglum stipulated that 40 years ago this argument would have been stronger. I merely meant to show that all it takes is a corrupt DA to refuse to investigate and it’s all over.

In the Rodney King case the trial was held in a predominantly white jurisdiction that was not representative of the whole of the LA area. The prosecutors tried for a change of venue but were unsuccessful. In a jury trial, depending on how many jurors need to vote guilty for it to stick, you really only need one or two racists (in this case) to tilt the balance. If they fight hard enough other white jurors, who don’t really give a crap one way or the other and just want to go home, may be swayed. Again, you have merely one piece of the system that needs to fail to see justice done.

As to OJ the innocent verdict seemed to be a kneejerk reaction to settle the score from the Rodney King case. Regardless of your opinion of OJ’s guilt or innocence there is no way the jury did its job in that case. How they could sit on a case for months and render a verdict in a few hours is beyond me.

There are several different offenses that deal with causing someone’s death, ranging from ‘criminally negligent homicide’ to ‘murder’, with increasingly severe penalties. All of these criminalize the same consequence (killing someone). The difference between the offenses is not the result of the actor’s actions but rather the actor’s intentions and attitudes. Someone who kills someone else because he is extremely careless does not deserve the same penalty as someone who kills someone else because he was paid to do so.

All criminal law punishes ‘motivations’ insofar as criminal intent is required for all criminal offenses. If I kill someone with the intent to cause them to die, I commit murder. If I kill someone with the intent to scare them in a manner that is reckless toward the possibility of their death, I commit manslaughter (but not murder). If kill someone while carelessly operating my car, I may have committed negligent homicide. If I kill someone who I think is trying to kill me, I commit justifiable homicide (which is not a crime). My motivation (or lack thereof) for killing the person in each case directly determines what offense, if any, I have committed.

Intention is an integral element of the law; in fact, it is such a fundamental element that omitting it is unconstitutional, at least with respect to any offense which might lead to incarceration, and has been since the days of the Romans. Your statement therefore illustrates a fundamental lack of understanding of the history of Western criminal law.

I also notice that in a later post you attempted to distinguish motivation from intention. To an extent, there is a legal basis for this; however, almost every state that has the death penalty lists in its murder statute a number of “prohibited motives” that constitute “special conditions” which will qualify the defendant for the death penalty. These include motivations like “because the defendant committed murder for hire”. In other words, if I kill you simply because I don’t like you, I cannot be put to death; but if I kill you because I was paid to do so, I can be put to death. Nobody thinks this is unconstitutional (except for those who believe the death penalty itself is unconstitutional). Clearly, motive is fair game in sentencing. Motive also enters into the analysis of “depraved indifference” for kicking a reckless homicide into murder (in those states that have a “depraved indifference” murder formulation) and is a critical part of proving criminal intention in most cases. So while the law may not formally require a motive to prove the offense, in practice the inability to prove a motive will preclude a conviction for lack of intent.
**

Hate crime laws do not protect individuals differently. They penalize disfavored motivations. Killing a white person because you hate whites, a man because you hate men, or a Christian because you hate Christians would all be hate crimes under the various hate crime laws and proposals I have seen. This creates no equal protection issue. Even if it did, the Supreme Court has held that it is constitutional to create laws that favor “disfavored minorities” in order to remedy demonstrated past discrimination.

The issue with the Constitutionality of hate crime laws is not equal protection, but rather freedom of expression. It is entirely legal to hate people and to express that hate peacefully; the law cannot punish hate alone absent wrongful acts. However, the law can punish wrongful acts, and the Supreme Court has already said that it is constitutional for the law to impose a more serious penalty for acts motivated by hatred than for those not so motivated.

I don’t understand this objection to hate crime legislation. What’s wrong with penalizing conduct that is clearly antisocial and that most people think is wrong? Isn’t that the exact function of the criminal law?

puddleglum said:

I wasn’t commenting on whether it would change it or not – just correcting what you had said.

After all, just 'cus Bush got it wrong in the debate doesn’t mean we have to also. :wink:

Wonderful KellyM! Simply wonderful!

Needs2know

I you punish differently because of hate the difference in the punishments is the punishment for hate. Punishing intent is fine with me, but punishing motivation especially political motivation is what I object to.

I am unclear why David B is flirting with me.

'Cus this way, if I commit a crime against you, it can’t be called a “hate” crime.

So you’re saying that those two redneck assholes that dragged that poor man behind the truck until his head popped off were into politics?

Needs2know

Hypothetically, let’s say I’m a Communist and I believe that “property is theft” and all that stuff. I therefore choose to disregard your protected property rights and “borrow” your car. Should I be immune for prosecution for grand theft auto? Can a court choose to impose a greater sentence because my testimony that I don’t believe in property rights leads the court to believe that I am more likely to repeat my offense?

The answer to my questions above are “of course not” and “yes”. This is not just because being a Communist is highly disfavored in the United States, but rather because political belief is never justification for criminal conduct. And a court is justified in imposing a harsher sentence when the court has reason to believe that the offender is more likely to repeat his or her offense.

You’re free to hate anyone you want. Doesn’t mean we (the rest of society) have to like you for it, and doesn’t mean that we have to let you off light when you let your hate get the better of you and do something you shouldn’t have.

Can anyone explain how hate crime laws are supposed to work in 10 words or less? Ok, you may need a few more words than 10 but if it’d require a 20 page dissertation then just say so and don’t bother.

My reason for asking is that Navigator and I agreed that a hate crime law that merely adds to a sentence (i.e. 20 years for murder plus 10 for being a hate crime) seem, at least to us, to be of little value.

However, if a hate crime law is added at the federal level to allow society a second shot at those people who somehow slipped through the system then such a law might be worthwhile.

At the very least it’d help define my stance on the issue.

As has been pointed out to me there were three redneck a-holes. The unnecessarily brutal and public murder of a black man seemed designed to make a statement. I dont think political is the mot juste but it in a larger sense hatred of minorities is a political view.

As I understand hate crime laws. If you commit a crime for a garden variety reason (greed, revenge, boredom) you get one sentence and if you commit an identical crime against a minority because they are a minority you get a stiffer sentence.

“Unnecessarily brutal and public murder”? So it would have been all right if they had, say, snuck into his house and quietly murdered him by slipping cyanide into his eggnog? Just what sort of murder is “necessarily brutal”?

Yes, the act was intended to make a statement. So what? Free speech is the right to speak, not the right to make a statement however you want. Murder is not an acceptable way to make a statement. Period. End of sentence. The fact that the law gives you a virtually absolute right to make statements through peaceful speech makes it even less acceptable to use violent means to express an opinion. This justifies the notion that using violence to express opinions should be punished more severely: we want to channel such expression into peaceful speech by making the alternative as legally undesirable as possible.

Hatred of minorities is a political view. That doesn’t make it a valid basis to commit murder.

So what about that do you find so offensive? Is it that you don’t believe some crimes are motivated by hatred for minorities? Or is it the minority aspect that you object too? I personally think these laws might be a victory for more than just Blacks, Hispanics and Jews. Women might use a law such as this to their advantage. Women aren’t minorities are they? And surely you would not argue that some crimes against women are not motivated by hatred. You also could not possibly be blind to the fact that women are not more often brutalized because they are women?

Somehow I think you’ve got this hate crime law all wrong. I also agree that it does no good to tack on a few extra years for such behavior. But if a law is mandated at the federal level in an attempt to rectify inequities in local jurisdictions then like KellyM stated before that would be legally feasible and constitutionally correct. It would also be a socially ethical thing to do.

Needs2know

More accurately, if you commit a crime against a person which is motivated by hatred toward that person’s race, religion, gender, national origin, ethnic group, or any of a number of other class identifications, you will be penalized more severely.

The problem with hate-motivated crime is that much of it is committed with the intent of creating terror within the targeted group. The target of a hate crime is not merely the individual attacked, but the group(s) which that person is a member of. Such an act is obviously antisocial (creating terror is never acceptable behavior) which needs to be suppressed to the fullest extent that the law is capable of without suppressing the underlying opinion.

What I don’t get is why people are so opposed to punishing such conduct. Why are you opposed to making it more illegal to commit unlawful offenses for clearly inappropriate reasons?

I am for punishing the behavior, not the motivation. It is the murder that sould be punished not the motivation behind the murder. Would it be a better if those men had killed Byrd because they owed him money? Of course not, murder is murder and should be punished as such. The penalties for murder are more than sufficient to punish those who commit it.
What I object to about hate crime laws is that they create government mandated distinctions amoung victims. The government should treat all of its citizens equally. Should there be harsher sentences for those who kill black people as opposed to white people, should an assault against a women be less a crime than that against a man. Hate crime laws are just as objectionable because the government should serve all the people.
KellyM
Are their appropriate reasons to commit crime?
Needs to Know
Women are a minority, even though women outnumber men they are classified by the government.
How is passing a law against something that is already illegal a benefit to women?
Where are these localities that are overlooking crime? And how would creating a nother crime for them to overlook make things better.

Hate crime laws do not “benefit” only some of the population. As I previously stated, hate crime laws will apply if a member of a minority commits an act against a member of the majority, if that act is motivated by hate toward the majority group. Hate crime laws do not create “mandated distinctions” among victims.

I am also perplexed by this notion that the law should not punish motivation. The law has been punishing motivation since time immemorial. Why should we suddenly stop doing so now?

Hate crime laws do not benefit anyone as I said in my last post.
Here is an example that shows what I object to
You and your neighbor both have children who go to the same school. Both children are beaten up at lunch time. Both kids have their lunch money taken. Both bullies are caught. The bully that beat up your child is suspended for a week. The bully that beat up your neighbors child is suspected of being prejudiced and is suspended for two weeks. Has equal justice been done?

Hate crimes are acts of terrorism, defined as an illegal act intended to strike fear in a group and control their actions through fear. I think we should treat perpetrators of hate crimes as we do terrorists. A crime is a personal act, but a hate crime is a political act.

Kind of like how assasination is treated differently than murder.