what do you mean by “wrong” – morally wrong? constitutionally wrong? wrong according to Bill Martin?
I think that here you are mixing things up when talking about justice being blind. Justice is blind when it treats different people under the same conditions in the same manner. Independently from hate crime laws the present legal system still assumes that motivation matters.
the relative importance of vicims is a strawman.
That’s fine if the standard of motivation is clear and objective. Subjective standards ( i.e. He did it cause he hates blacks ) are a stretch legally, and fail to consider the loss encountered by any victims to be equally valid regardless of the nature of the perpetrator.
I was responding to this inarticulate gem …
… which confuses “thoughtcrime” with “intent” and doesn’t appear to understand that juries are fully capable of determining specific and general intent.
So the rights of the people ( the victims, and also society, for whom the prosecutors are accountable to represent) aren’t guaranteed to be equal under the law? That would make justice not only unblind, but subjective. Maybe you think its okay for the law to treat crimes of equal magnitude differently based on ( subjective and unprovable ) social standards, but not me. I expect the law to represent all non criminals equally, and to punish criminals objectively, based solely on the nature of the actual crime, and not one’s thoughts.
there will be instances where its easy to find that hatred of blacks was the primary motive, regardless, its the jury’s job, and if they can’t make this finding, they come back with a not guilty verdict.
If you mean motivation as to murder one, murder two, etc. as a guide to punishment, then I would agree with you. There are different punishments depending on the circumstances of each crime.
see my post above, there are already enhancements that treat the convict differently at sentencing. use a gun, your sentence will be enhanced. a third strike felony means a huge difference in sentencing for the same crime over someone not convicted of a third strike.
I understand that you are trying to talk from an ideal point of view, and I am talking from the ignorant point of view because I really do not know too much about criminal law. I just make observation based on what I see in regard to existing laws that are not based on politically correct definition of “hate crime”. My legal knowledge is limited to news and wikipedia.
I thought you were making a general statement that the “thoughtcrime” appellation for hate-crime laws was bogus. I didn’t realize it was only that particular argument that you meant. I wasn’t really defending or attacking anything except that there is a good argument that punishing “hate crimes” more than other similar actions is punishing people for their thoughts, which seems like thoughtcrime to me.
This is crazy because you get decisions like it is legal to burn a flag as free speech, but not legal to burn a draft card as free speech.
I’m not the one arguing “by association”; you did when you said,
According to you, just being a member of the klan would be a crime.
Why should I do that? I merely used the decision not to prosecute voter intimidation as an example of selective enforcement, which you ignored. I made no such comparison between voter intimidation and murder.
Just exactly where in this
did you mention “klan lynching”? You didn’t. You keep introducing extraneous factors that change the discussion. The reason the legislature shouldn’t make klan prosecutions easier is there is a constitutional prohibition of bills of attainder. Under a bill of attainder, a person could be found guilty of a crime by a vote of the legislature, no need for a trial. That’s why they are unconstitutional. Also, the constitution requires that people in similar circumstances must be treated the same under the law. Hate crimes laws violate the equal protection clause, and their true intent is to circumvent constitutional protections.
Intending to steal something escalates trespassing into burglary because stealing is a crime. I still disagree with this, but it is not the same thing. Hatred is not a crime.
I did not see where someone says that hatred is a crime, my understanding is that hate crimes are crimes driven by hate. Remember that in Catholic morality intent, including hatred, can increase the culpability of some sins. Secular morality is a derivative of religious morality (e.g. natural law).
The argument gets a little complex, and, unfortunately, we all (me) get a little heated.
you can’t pick words out of the legal lexicon and use them any way you want, “attainder” being the most recent example. I’m always happy to discuss issues with anyone, but you’ve got to get up to speed if you expect to learn something.