Should hate motivated crimes be handled dfferently?

I for one do not believe that they should and I'd like to give an example why. I am sure that we all remember the case few years back where a couple guys beat a homosexual and then dragged him behind thier truck right? Well the fact is that what they did was a heinous crime regardless of the reason for comittng it. I mean would it really have been any less heinous if they had simply not liked the guys haircut? The point I am making is that the law should not discriminate between violent crimes comitted beacause of hate and those comitted for profit. If a man commits murder his motive is not as important as the fact that he commited the crime in the first place is it worse that he shot a man for being black than if he just wanted to steal the money from his dead body?

crime is crime as far as i'm concerned. the reason or motive behind it is irrelavent unless that motive is being used to determine what crime was commited (murder one versus murder two for example)

but lets look at a basic crime. assault. now the act of assaulting someone means physically hurting someone. whether its because you dont like the glasses the person is wearing or you caught him on top of your wife last night. the act itself denotes a certain amount of anger. trying to prosecute somoene based on their feelings more than theiur actions is a form of thought police, as if to say "if you have hate in you, you will be punished!".

now i am no fan of hate, but i am a huge fan of people exercising their right to be hateful if they wish even if i think that being hateful is a waste of our precious time on this planet. actions speak louder than words and that should apply in criminal court.

i justnt understand the concept of trying to outlaw hate instead of simply cracking down on violent offenders and finding a way to prevent such things from happening.


mwm i would say no it doesnt matter as the person is still dead. things like finding out if it was premeditated was important, but details like the person being black or simply had a fat wallet, pretty much irrelavent. but some can and have argued that killing someone for their wallet is a crime of passion, they werent really trying to kill them only get their wallet. being oblivious to the fact the person is still dead and that has to be accounted for.

our legal system is messed up.

We play the home version of comparative atrocities all the time. And to a certain extent I'm glad courts do as well.

Which is worse? Killing your husband for being a jerk or killing random people because you're the DC sniper?

DC sniper.

I take it you might agree with the "cop killer" laws? What makes cops so special that killing one warrants the death penalty? I don't know, it's just worse.

But no one complains until they get caught for killing a cop. So why compain about hate crime laws, unless you're planning one?

[Edited on 12-7-2004 by RANT]

Originally posted by RANT
We play the home version of comparative atrocities all the time. And to a certain extent I'm glad courts do.

Which is worse? Killing your husband for being a jerk or killing random people because you're the DC sniper?

DC sniper.

I take it you might agree with the "cop killer" laws? What makes cops so special that killing one warrants the death penalty? I don't know, it's just worse.

But no one complains until they get caught for killing a cop. So why compain about hate crime laws unless, you're planning one?

i take issue with this as i am agaisnt punishing someone more for killing a cop or assaulting a cop.

cops are simply people as we are and i dont why someone who willingly takes the job of being cop have special priviledge when it comes to such laws.

to me it says "cops are more special than the people they are suppose to protect" and makes me feel as if my life means less than a cops life in the eyes of the law and the courts.

noone makes a person become a cop and getting killed is a "job hazard" just like someone could lose their life in other risky jobs. its part of the job sorry to say and i dont understand the reasoning behind giving the crime of killing a cop higher status which leads to harsher punishments than the murder of a regular person. should ALL murders be prosecuted as much as possible? does their job really matter that much? if so does that mean if a busboy gets wasted as someone holds up the local eatery that his life is worth less than the banker who got greased while his bank was being held up as his job had higher status according to society?

sorry but this is just BS and we know it.

Okay, maybe cop killers are a bad example (though I still think alot of people agree with those laws), but my point is more based in the fallacy of one size fits all manditory sentencing no matter what the crime.

While I want the absolute worst punishment possible for someone that rapes and kills a woman, I want that punishment plus 20 years and chemical castration for someone that rapes and kills a child. Or I want the death penalty (if we must have one) reserved for THAT guy. It's just stupid to put every retarded guy in Texas in the chair for being near a murder.

True justice needs options IMO, and we've slowly been eroding those options from Judges. Just like I don't think someone with a crack rock in their pocket deserves the same punishment as someone with a trunk full of coc aine. But some people do. Some people even think crack is worse!

I'm not trying to make this a one way street either. The black guys that rioted in LA and beat up that white truck driver, probably deserve being charged with a hate crime too. I personally found those people WORSE than the three guys that knocked me out for my wallet in Atlanta (that also happened to be black). Don't you?

No I dont. In your example

While I want the absolute worst punishment possible for someone that rapes and kills a woman, I want that punishment plus 20 years and chemical castration for someone that rapes and kills a child.

The differences in the two crimes is not the intent but the action.
But let me ask you this RANT, If one man rapes a woman because he wants to exercise power over her ( the fact is rape has very little to do with sex BTW) and another man rapes a woman to "teach that uppity Ni**er bi**h a lesson" ( things which unfortunatley were somewhat common in the 50s) which crime is worse? both victims will experiene severe pyschologica truma, both assailants have commited heinous crimes is the fact that one was a racist make either crime any better?

While I want the absolute worst punishment possible for someone that rapes and kills a woman, I want that punishment plus 20 years and chemical castration for someone that rapes and kills a child. Or I want the death penalty (if we must have one) reserved for THAT guy. It's just stupid to put every retarded guy in Texas in the chair for being near a murder.

and such retarded people should be fopund incomptent and taken care off. but being punished because you're retarded and didnt realize what you were doing and killing someone because they banged your wife or because they're purple is a vast difference.

the retarded person cant help being retarded, some of them genuinely do not understand right from wrong. its a completely different situation.

altohugh to say we should go after those who commited crimes based on hate more than other crimes is like saying the victims of the other crimes are given less priority, and mean less as you're going after the hate and not the person who commited the crime.

are not all victims of crime due the same amount of justice from our system?

should this person get less justice because the person didnt call them a racial slur even if its the same crime someone else commited while saying a racial slur?

i dont get what you're saying.

instead of trying to defend this from the perspective of the law maker, try it from the perspective of a victim.

are YOU going to give a damn if they called you a cracker mother #er as they took your wallet? i know i wouldnt, the fact they stole my wallet is the principle. words are words, words are meaningless actions mean everything. i wouldnt care if they took my wallet because i was white or because they thought i was rich. they took my wallet. thats what happened to you.

and what if they called you a cracker. do you think they should be prosecuted harder because of a name they called you or because they're violent offenders who beat you up for no reason and took your wallet?

either way they still took your wallet.

so no i dont think the black guys that pulled richard denny out of his truck and beat are any worse than the ones that knocked you out and took your wallet. still violents acts either way you slice it. doesnt matter why they did it.


maybe if you wanted to argue that defending yourself is a good reason then yeah i could go with that. but i just find it hard to excuse someone for assaulting someone raping someone or killing someone regardless of the reason. does the reason somehow make the person less dead because they didnt hate them? less raped? less beaten and robbed? less crippled? less traumatized?

its no surprise people hardly get justice anymore, apparently enough of them arent victims of "hate" even if they're victims of assault murder rape molestation...apparently its not enough to commit the crime, you have to have hate in your heart to be considered a "really bad criminal" where as you're just a common criminal and should be taken lightly.

i'm all for the victim, to hell with the criminal.

I'm not trying to say one crime is better than another. And not even really that one is worse than the other (though I think that is how the average person sees it).

Basically, there's no logic behind any way we punish people. It's purely an emotional excercise IMO for the benefit of society.

Realizing that, while I logically agree with you that dead is dead (the end is the same), I still believe dragging someone behind a truck to their death because of the color of their skin is WORSE than shooting someone for their wallet. I can't defend it logically, but what does logic have to do with society's blood lust for extracting approriate revenge?

Would I rather be shot or dragged to my death? Hmmm, let me think about that. Shot please. I can't imagine it wouldn't matter to you either.

Again RANtTyou are talkng about different actions, not different intent. Yes dragging someone behind a truck for any reason is worse than shooting someone for any reason because the pain and suffering inflicted by being dragged behind a truck is worse. However if two assailants drag two different sets of victims behind a truck, one for hate related reasons and one for the hell of it they are both crines of the same order of magnitude. The reason why they dragged someone behind a truck is irrelevant.

[edit on 12-7-2004 by mwm1331]

Well that's fine MwM (and no one says the prosecutor HAS to use the hate crime charge), but using Prank's Richard Denney thing versus a mugging...

I don't know the current punishments for simple assualt (like a bar fight) versus assault during the commision of crime (mugging), but right now...I'm pretty sure my muggers would get more time than Richard Denney's beaters.

That's SO NOT RIGHT IMO. At least some "hate crime" legislation would allow for punishment worthy of the act.

Look at it from that perspective, not assuming everyone gets the same punishment now because they don't.

Hate crimes laws wouldn't be required to be used by DA's. You know they get to charge whatever they want based on the crime. So in that sense it offers at least some sense of equitibale justice in an area severely lacking.

You don't think Prosecutors need more options instead of less? That's the kind of thing that gets guilty people off IMO.

The problem is this,
1) how do you prove wether hate was a motivating factor or not? is any crime in which the defendant and victim are of different race, creed or religon a hate crime?
2) Making hate illeagal is both inpractical and illeagal. Freedom of speech, religon, and assembly give people the right to hate, Thats the reason the government can't ban KKK or neo-nazi rallies and why I would fight any bill to try to change it as (I think it was) Jefferson said "I may not like what you have to say but I will fight to the death to defend your right to say it." The law can ONLY regulate actions it can not and should not regulate thought.
3) Saying that the motvation for the crime is the most important factor in sentancing ( or any factor at all) gives tacit support to "regular" crimes. If two men both shot two other men the motivation is irrelevant both are murders. as for not everyone being sentanced to the same time for the same crime I believe tht should stop as well. I dont care why a person commits rape or murder they should pay regardless of motivation.

#1. is any crime in which the defendant and victim are of different race, creed or religon a hate crime? No.

how do you prove wether hate was a motivating factor or not? If it's not obvious, don't prosecute it as one. We're talking about a very special circumstance law where all other avenues would not serve justice.

#2. Making hate illeagal is both inpractical and illeagal. Yes it is.

Freedom of speech, religon, and assembly give people the right to hate Yes it does.

No conflict here. Hate all you want, but acting on it should get punished. That's not regulating the thought, just responding to a society that has deemed things like racial violence wrong. You can't fire people just for being black either, but that doesn't mean the governemnet is telling you to not be a bigot. Just there are consequences for acting like one in the public arena where the intent is racially motivated harm.

#3. We just disagree. Motivation is important to me in every instance. Stealing bread for profit is worse than stealing bread to feed a starving child. Sorry, I prefer the concept of mercy and being able to be extra punative over one size fits all manditory sentencing.

Why can't you display the swatiska in Germany? I think it's the same reason we have hate crimes. America has a dirty past bubbling under it's present. After generations of institutionalized hatred, America has to show that certain behavior isn't tolerated anymore. There were always laws against murder, but those laws did not always protect minorites. Some states make it automatic felonies to assault someone over 65, or a pregnant woman. Sometimes the circumstances of a crime do make it more heinous. If that weren't true, we'd use computers to execute our laws, not human beings with rational thought.

Originally posted by mwm1331
The problem is this,
1) how do you prove wether hate was a motivating factor or not? is any crime in which the defendant and victim are of different race, creed or religon a hate crime?

I have to say I agree with you that the term "hate crime" is difficult concept to prove in many instances. And serves no purpose except to say crimes against some are more heinous than others. It's "feel good" legislation that upon examination turns out to be pointless since no murder or assault is actually committed because the perpetrator actually gives a crap about their victim.

My sister and I are the product of a mixed raced couple. She has definite hispanic characteristics, I have my father's european. If one of us were to be murdered - my parents could care less about the motivation behind it.

[edit on 12-7-2004 by Bleys]

NO.

You can't convict a person for what he or she thinks (or at least, you're not supposed to!), only for what he or she does. A crime is a physical act that robs another person of their rights; not an idea, however distasteful the idea might be.

'Hate crimes' purports that some people are 'more equal' than others, and that's just wrong. All people are created equal, and so all humans -- their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness -- are equally important. No matter the race, religion, or gender of either the criminal or the victim, stalking is still stalking, threats are still threats, destruction of property is still destruction of property, battery is still battery, and murder is still murder.

The punishment should always be the same for the same crime. You can't play favorites one way or the other if you expect justice to be fair.

Note: Just to clarify what I mean by murder --

Murder is the cold-blooded, intentional killing of another person. I'd give convicted murderers the death penalty. Manslaughter is when you do something stupid (like drunk driving) that gets someone else killed, even if you didn't mean to hurt anybody. A manslaughterer should get at least a couple of decades in jail. Self-Defense is when someone else was attempting to batter or murder you, and you had to either batter or murder them back in self-defense (like someone breaking into your house in the middle of the night with a gun and a knife; what do you do, talk to the burglar?) -- people who were simply defending themselves shouldn't go to jail. Finally, the plea of insanity in the case of murder and manslaughter should be very hard to prove in court; not to try to make it unfair for those who are truly crazy, but because abuse of this plea is rampant, especially when a small percentage of the population is actually certifiable (like 5%?) Insane people who commit felony crimes should be in mental institutions for the rest of their lives.

That's my $0.02, anyway.

Lets try this example and see where this goes...

obviously immigrant "foriegn" family lives in house....house is spray painted all over with racial slurs..no threats tho just slurs..what it the crime?

Is it mearly vandalism?
Do the words deface the property any more than the paint already did?
do the victims feelmore/less victimized?
does this warrent additional penalties because you painted a swastika instead of a smiley face?

Something like that can be deemed obscene...which in that case yes they should recieve a bit more punishment...I personally dont agree with hate crime laws...but I do agree with COP killer laws...a cop who gets killed isnt some random victim...he/she is there to prevent the criminal from doing further damage...or stopping potential damage...so yes the cop should be treated differently...But in reality it doesnt matter much...in NYC...Murder 1 (Cop killer) and Murder 2 (killing of a regular joe)...are both "A" Felonies and get treated the same...both are extremely serious...the main difference...the death penality...and the media coverage...but in most places...Murder 1 or 2 will get you 25 to life with a conviction....