My problem with 'hate crimes'

[Mike1w]

Maybe that’s what they say, but the effect is the same. Regardless, it’s hypocritical, and borderline unconstitutional, at least in the US, since in other legal areas, the government prohibits identical distinctions being made.

 

[mrsdizzyd]

The government is not “discriminating” when it sees hate as an aggravating factor for sentencing. It is enforcing the law.

It can hardly be unconstitutional when hate crimes legislation enforced constitutional rights.

I think you fundamentally misunderstand why hate crime statues exist. You need to go back to the drawing board with your argument.

 

[Mike1w]

Either racial, ethnic, or other distinctions matter, or they don’t. Discrimination is discrimination, regardless of forum. They can’t matter in criminal justice, and be prohibited from mattering in other areas. Hypocrisy.

 

[BartholomewB]

It’s true that “hate crime” is a relatively recent category, but length of sentence, or the death penalty in preference to a prison sentence, has historically varied with the gravity of the crime. There have long been categories such as first-degree murder, second-degree murder, deliberate homicide, mitigated deliberate homicide, aggravated murder, voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, and many others. In all these instances, the victim’s family might always have a reason to feel resentful if their loved one’s killer seems to have been let off too lightly.

 

[JoeShlabotnik]

As long as people are punished for what they do, does it matter how many years in prison they get?
Ultimately, they will be judged by their Maker once they leave this earth.

 

[niceatheist]

The impetus for hate crimes in the US came out of the civil rights era. In the southern states, you couldn’t get a jury to convict white supremacists for lynchings and other race based crimes. By creating Federal hate crimes, the FBI could haul lynchers in to a federal court where there was a reasonable chance of conviction.

 

[Hodos]

I hate the entire concept of “hate crime” legislation and find it actually dangerous in a free society. The first issue that I have with hate crime legislation is that, to your point, it criminalizes perceived thoughts or motivations. In other words it uses compulsion to penalize people for what they think or say, which under the plain verbiage of our Constitution is not permissible. And, what if I hold objectionable thoughts but never act upon them? Is it still a crime? Second, so what? If I have a specific motive for committing a violent crime of some sort does that somehow make the impact of the action any worse? A murder is a murder. Does it matter if I committed the murder for a particular political motivation vs. some other motivation such as in the commission of a robbery? Both victims are just as dead. The reason I committed the crime should be irrelevant to the penalty for committing the crime. Essentially, what you end up doing is affording special protections and rights to some victims that you do not extend to others. I think that gives the wrong message to society as a whole. Third, I think its unnecessary. We already have the ability to impose harsher penalties for aggravated circumstances. However, charging someone with an aggravated crime should be tied not to motivation but to the nature of the action. So for example, if you commit an assault with your fists, that would merit a certain penalty. But if you assault someone with a weapon, which could inflict greater harm, then it would be appropriate to find them guilty of an aggravated assault and merit a harsher sentence. Personally, I think “hate crime” legislation should be done away with so that we deal with crime using even scales.

 

[Hodos]

The impetus for hate crimes in the US came out of the civil rights era. In the southern states, you couldn’t get a jury to convict white supremacists for lynchings and other race based crimes. By creating Federal hate crimes, the FBI could haul lynchers in to a federal court where there was a reasonable chance of conviction.

Agree, that was the initial motivation for creating “hate crime” legislation, so that federal courts could prosecute someone for a crime that the state had acquitted under the federal guise of violating someone’s civil rights. In effect, they ushered in double jeopardy and coopted the state judicial systems (not a good thing under federalism). The question is whether this is still a pressing need (I would argue that for the most part the answer is no), and whether there are other means of correcting for biased juries (I think there are, such as a change of venue or declaration of a mistrial for egregious violations).

 

[whatistrue]

I just think there should be no distinction in these cases, because that is an arbitrary judgement of the worth of a human’s life.

I understand where you are coming from on this and I can’t really say that I disagree, but my personal emphasis is different. I don’t believe that hate crimes as such, or increased penalties attaching to hate crimes should exist simply because they criminalize thought. And once you start criminalizing thought, where does it end?

Also, and I invite any real attorneys here to chime in with actual facts rather than belief, my understanding of US law is that motive was never, until hate crimes came to be, an element of any crime. Intent, yes; motive, no.

 

[niceatheist]

niceatheist:

The impetus for hate crimes in the US came out of the civil rights era. In the southern states, you couldn’t get a jury to convict white supremacists for lynchings and other race based crimes. By creating Federal hate crimes, the FBI could haul lynchers in to a federal court where there was a reasonable chance of conviction.

Agree, that was the initial motivation for creating “hate crime” legislation, so that federal courts could prosecute someone for a crime that the state had acquitted under the federal guise of violating someone’s civil rights. In effect, they ushered in double jeopardy and coopted the state judicial systems (not a good thing under federalism). The question is whether this is still a pressing need (I would argue that for the most part the answer is no), and whether there are other means of correcting for biased juries (I think there are, such as a change of venue or declaration of a mistrial for egregious violations).

I’d debate whether there was co-opting going on. The Supremacy Clause gives the Federal Government pre-eminence in many matters. Leaving those trials strictly to the states meant murders, some notoriously awful, would have effectively gone unpunished. It wasn’t merely southern courts that were the problem, the juries were the problem. The whole legal system in the south was bent to make sure the KKK and like-minded individuals could escape justice, so I think creating that class of Federal crime was critical to giving African American victims of violence a venue in which they had some reasonable expectation of justice. I think the Civil Rights Acts in general were instrumental in ending the most egregious aspects of racism.

Whether they are still necessary or not is a matter of debate. Sadly, the Supreme Court didn’t move to end gerrymandering, but at least in some states there’s been a pretty clear racial bias in the way districts are drawn up, so I think there’s still some way to go.