Hate Crime: A Savage Hypocrisy
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FreakyLocz14
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Hate crimes are wrong. They punish you for your opinions/beliefs.
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You aren't entitled to an opinion when you kill/hurt/maim others based on their skin color or creed.
Ineffable~
DAT SNARKITUDE
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The way I see it, if you murdered someone you murdered someone, and whether that person is black or Asian or white or whatever, you should be going to jail for a very long time. It shouldn't matter if the person you killed happened to look slightly different from you. You're a murderer, get over it. I don't find white murderers killing other white people any less appalling than white murderers killing a tonne of black people.
This.
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They don't punish you for your opinions/beliefs but your reasoning behind doing a crime. In most cases, I don't think why you committed a crime should matter. You should be punished equally despite your reasoning behind it.
Obviously there are exceptions, such as self defense. But motivation stemming from hatred should only be used by the prosecution as a reason why they'd do it, and only that.
I just don't see how having hate crimes does anything good besides further dividing people based on what they are.
FreakyLocz14
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When you kill/hurt/maim someone, you should be prosecuted for the act of killing/hurting/maiming someone. Additonal punishments for your opinions and beliefs are wrong and contrary to the 1st Amendment.
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Killing someone regardless of their skin is a crime; but killing someone because of the colour of their skin is a hate crime.
I think you should learn the difference between the two.
FreakyLocz14
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Motive has never really been a crime itself until the relatively modern concept of hates crimes. Sure, motive can be used in court to give the jury a reason that the defendant would have wanted to commit the crime, but it never really was an element of the crime itself.
This concept of hate crimes is really dangerous and opens the door to all kinds of different Orwellean ThinkCrimes.
Ineffable~
DAT SNARKITUDE
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Being racist isn't a crime. Killing someone is a crime, so, we're not turning motive itself into a crime. We're turning killing into a crime (which it already is).
FreakyLocz14
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Killing is already a crime. A hate crime is not a crime itself. It's an enhancement added onto an existing crime to punish the defendant harsher than other murderers because of his opinions and beliefs.
Mario The World Champion
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You may believe that hate crimes is wrong because like you said, it opens the door to all kinds of different Orwellean ThinkCrimes. The hate crime label tends to add into the stigma of hate, trying to make the offender look like he's Satan or associated with evil in an effort to get a solid conviction. But a lot of hate crimes are completely vicious in their own nature.
Have you heard of the case going on right now in Mississippi about this 18-year-old white kid who ran over a black man for no reason other than he was black? And this 18-year-old was notorious for being racist and looking for anyone who was black to assault, plus he even bragged about running the poor man over with no remorse? While motive itself is not a crime, being racist is not a crime and having different opinions and beliefs is not a crime also, he acted out and this man was brutally murdered because of his skin color. A strong belief like that can a driving force in their actions, especially when it's fueled by hatred of another race, orientation, or religion.
As to what Alley Cat is trying to point out with hate crimes possibly being hypocrisy, there are a lot of horrid crimes that happened and some of them aren't really labeled hate crimes. Take the Cheshire, Connecticut, home invasion murders. 3 women were killed and the house torched by Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky and I haven't heard anybody say this is a hate crime because the women who were killed were white. If the women were black, then those two men would have been executed by now.
Overall, are hate crimes justified? Maybe, but nobody is crying foul when a white person is killed by another white, but anybody killed for being different is wrong. I can see the hypocrisy in that. But you can't deny many hate crimes are completely vicious in their own right. Hate will drive people into doing inhuman acts of violence against anyone who is not like them.
FreakyLocz14
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If someone runs someone over, that is a serious felony and would carry a serious prison term with or without the hate factor taken into account. I'm not proficient in Mississippi law, but being a conservative state, I'm sure they have a pretty Draconian penal system.
Hate crimes don't even cover all hate crimes, because I could hate you for disagreeing with me politically, for being a past lover who cheated on me, or for any other reason and be motivated to kill you based on that hate, yet it wouldn't be considered a hate crime.
You say that killing those who are different is wrong, while I say that killing anybody is wrong. If a family member of mine was killed, does our family deserve less justice just because the person who killed them wasn't racist, while some other family deserves more justice if the killer was a racist?
Melody
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Freaky, you're still using a "Slippery Slope" argument, and that happens to be a strawman type argument which is thus rendered invalid when detected.
The first amendment protects your rights to THINK whatever you want to THINK and SAY whatever you want to SAY. It DOES NOT always protect your right to DO whatever you want to DO. I believe that if it can be proven in court beyond a reasonable doubt that IF YOUR ONLY MOTIVE WAS HATE then you SHOULD be punished more harshly for lacking control.
Thinking and believing is one thing. Acting on those is another beast entirely. The idea of hate crimes being punished more stiffly than regular crimes is to DISCOURAGE people from ACTING on certain beliefs in violent ways.
I for one believe that the moment you can justify the use of violence to spread your own beliefs and thoughts to others is the moment you've just invalidated your ENTIRE argument and thus do not deserve to be heard. So yes, I'm all for locking up people who commit violent crimes out of hatred alone for a little bit longer to safeguard the rights of ALL.
The first amendment protects your rights to THINK whatever you want to THINK and SAY whatever you want to SAY. It DOES NOT always protect your right to DO whatever you want to DO. I believe that if it can be proven in court beyond a reasonable doubt that IF YOUR ONLY MOTIVE WAS HATE then you SHOULD be punished more harshly for lacking control.
Thinking and believing is one thing. Acting on those is another beast entirely. The idea of hate crimes being punished more stiffly than regular crimes is to DISCOURAGE people from ACTING on certain beliefs in violent ways.
I for one believe that the moment you can justify the use of violence to spread your own beliefs and thoughts to others is the moment you've just invalidated your ENTIRE argument and thus do not deserve to be heard. So yes, I'm all for locking up people who commit violent crimes out of hatred alone for a little bit longer to safeguard the rights of ALL.
FreakyLocz14
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Actually, actions have been protected as speech by the Supreme Court. They way you act can be seen as a form of symbolic speech. Please see United States v. O'Brien (1968) 391 U.S. 367.
If actions are speech, surely that doesn't mean that you can do whatever you want claim free speech, right? That's correct, but the regulation of your actions by the government must be content-neutral and pay no heed to your viewpoints. (Legal Services Corp. v. Velazquez (2001) 531 U.S. 535)
Mr Cat Dog
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Please see (or, rather, watch) the episode of South Park entitled 'Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000' for my views on this subject. Or, you can just read the speech said by Stan, Kyle and Token plus some drivel by me. Your choice.
This whole issue reminds me of the thread a while back on domestic violence laws being repealed in Kansas. The main response was that "Oh no! Now men can go out and beat their wives up (or vice versa)"; However, repealing domestic violence laws (which seem to be a funny legal quirk of the US and not many other countries) didn't make assault or battery legal: it just removed some of the procedural elements that prevented early arrests of potential felons. Although that issue was to do with procedure, and this is to do with classification and sentencing, it bears a little bit of comparison.
That said, I understand why hate crimes are in operation: as Pachy has pointed out, the impetus is to prevent people from acting on their racist/sexist/homophobic/whatever beliefs. However, shouldn't the current system of criminal law be sufficient? There are already murder, manslaughter, assault, battery and other forms of violence-against-the-person laws that have been around since the dawn of criminal law. They have a mental element to them, but that with regard to intention to do the action, not to the motive behind the action. (Murder carries a larger sentence than manslaughter because the murderer intended to kill, irrespective of motive.)
Stan said:
This whole issue reminds me of the thread a while back on domestic violence laws being repealed in Kansas. The main response was that "Oh no! Now men can go out and beat their wives up (or vice versa)"; However, repealing domestic violence laws (which seem to be a funny legal quirk of the US and not many other countries) didn't make assault or battery legal: it just removed some of the procedural elements that prevented early arrests of potential felons. Although that issue was to do with procedure, and this is to do with classification and sentencing, it bears a little bit of comparison.
That said, I understand why hate crimes are in operation: as Pachy has pointed out, the impetus is to prevent people from acting on their racist/sexist/homophobic/whatever beliefs. However, shouldn't the current system of criminal law be sufficient? There are already murder, manslaughter, assault, battery and other forms of violence-against-the-person laws that have been around since the dawn of criminal law. They have a mental element to them, but that with regard to intention to do the action, not to the motive behind the action. (Murder carries a larger sentence than manslaughter because the murderer intended to kill, irrespective of motive.)
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On the idea that "all crimes are hate crimes": this is just a bit of semantics dance. "Hate crimes" ought to be called "Discriminatory hate crimes" since the idea is actually about certain groups being targeted because they are hated, not just that hatred was involved.
If people are committing crimes against people solely because they hate them, then either the current justice system or our society is inadequately dealing with this problem. If you can think of a better way of stopping hate crimes than with laws, then please, do share.
The way I see it, hate crimes laws are meant to address a disproportionate level of crime facing a particular group of people. So lets say that the amount of assaults against gay people was twice as high as that of assaults against any other group. Obviously there is something going on, but whatever it is it's ending up with more people being targeted. In order to try to stop this then you make the punishment for targeting a gay person worse than for targeting a random person. (Note: not just attacking someone who happens to be gay, but specifically singling them out because they are gay. Gay people are part of the general population and would still get attacked as much as everyone else if there were no hate-motivated attacks.) Theoretically it would mean people would think twice about targeting that group of people and that would cause fewer overall attacks against them.
The assumption behind the whole having hate crimes laws is, I think, that some crimes are only committed because of hatred and not just cases of "Well, they'd still attack someone even if it wasn't someone who was ________." I would agree with this. I think that some people, stripped of their hateful prejudices, would not commit crimes in the first place. Therefore singling out their beliefs is valid as far as I'm concerned.
tl;dr if your personal belief (or hatred) causes you to attack someone then that belief shouldn't be protected anymore and should be punished because it pushed you to commit a crime when you wouldn't otherwise. It's like the difference between attacking someone with your fists and attacking someone with a weapon. Only the weapon this time is a hateful belief.
If people are committing crimes against people solely because they hate them, then either the current justice system or our society is inadequately dealing with this problem. If you can think of a better way of stopping hate crimes than with laws, then please, do share.
The way I see it, hate crimes laws are meant to address a disproportionate level of crime facing a particular group of people. So lets say that the amount of assaults against gay people was twice as high as that of assaults against any other group. Obviously there is something going on, but whatever it is it's ending up with more people being targeted. In order to try to stop this then you make the punishment for targeting a gay person worse than for targeting a random person. (Note: not just attacking someone who happens to be gay, but specifically singling them out because they are gay. Gay people are part of the general population and would still get attacked as much as everyone else if there were no hate-motivated attacks.) Theoretically it would mean people would think twice about targeting that group of people and that would cause fewer overall attacks against them.
The assumption behind the whole having hate crimes laws is, I think, that some crimes are only committed because of hatred and not just cases of "Well, they'd still attack someone even if it wasn't someone who was ________." I would agree with this. I think that some people, stripped of their hateful prejudices, would not commit crimes in the first place. Therefore singling out their beliefs is valid as far as I'm concerned.
tl;dr if your personal belief (or hatred) causes you to attack someone then that belief shouldn't be protected anymore and should be punished because it pushed you to commit a crime when you wouldn't otherwise. It's like the difference between attacking someone with your fists and attacking someone with a weapon. Only the weapon this time is a hateful belief.
FreakyLocz14
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The weapons enhancement is a valid enhancement, because a weapon is capable of more physical harm than a fist fight. I undestand completely the reasoning behind hate crimes, and while they are well-intentioned, I can't get over the constititional and Orwellean issue of being punished for your thoughts, beliefs, and opinions. Hate is constitutionally protected (Snyder v. Phelps (2011) 562 U.S.). That leads me to the conclusion that while someone who commits a crime against someone based on hate, the harmful act is criminal, and worthy of prosecution to the fullest extent of the law, the hateful motive behind it is an belief/opinion they hold, and cannot be a basis for further punishment.
Oryx
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I would be interested in your reply to this part of Scarf's post:
I'm honestly ambivalent on hate crimes but I can see how this is certainly more effective than doing nothing, and I can't see another way to reduce hate crimes other than making a harsher punishment for them. What solution do you have that reduces hate crimes without going into the gray area we're in with the current laws?
Mr Cat Dog
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The only solution I can really advocate is better education and tolerance with regards to diversity issues such as the victims of hate crimes. I know that's a wishy-washy and horribly vague cop-out, but increasing the sentencing of already existing crimes doesn't seem like much of a deterrent.
FreakyLocz14
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As far as hate goes, I'd be open to an enhacement on a hateful act, just not a hateful motive. For example, if the defendant did soething additionally heinous like lynching a black person or sexually violating an LGBT person.
I authored a bill that began lessons in LGBT issues on our campus, with an opt-out provision for conscientious objectors.