Can someone explain hate crimes to me?

[IndianaJones]

How does the process work? How often is a crime classifed as a hate crime? Is it a separate part of the prosecution...prove the underlying crime and then show that it was a hate crime? Does the jury decide on each component individually?

Thanks.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. Basically, you prove the crime was committed SPECIFICALLY because

of a person's race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, creed, etc. It would be a part of the prosecution's case to prove this specifically in addition to the crime itself.

[glowing]

2. To me this law is b.s. I think it will eventually lead to the erosion

of our first amendment rights... If someone commits a crime, there are punishments that deal with those crimes...I would say a lot of crimes are committed with hate or vengence.. they're called crimes of passion and its a motivating factor as to why the crime is committed in the first place. If you want to fight hate, teach love early, often, and absolutely... Once someone is at the point where they are willing to violate someone else, it is often too late to help them, and jail is where they ought to be.

[IndianaJones]

3. I do not want this to degenerate into an argument about hate crimes...

however, I do not understand your objection to the concept. It has been proven time and again that crime motivated by race, gender or orientation have a negative impact not only on the victim, but the community and society in general.

[dogfacedboy]

4. Oddly enough, Shrill Willie O'Reilly believes hate crime laws are good. n/t

[TheFriendlyAnarchist]

10. Self-delete.

Moved to another thread to avoid hijacking this one.

[IndianaJones]

17. Again, it has been shown many times that there are impacts...

outside those of the underlying crime in certain cases, i.e. hate crimes.

[mmonk]

24. Actually, hate crimes involve civil rights issues

Therefore the penalty should require more than others. For example, when someone robs a convenience store, the penalty is more if the robber has a gun as opposed to being unarmed.

[glowing]

13. Yes, so its society that must learn and teach tolerance... A crime is

a failure on society. Why the shock and disbelief when something like this happens? Look at our fearless leader... inciting hate and fear on the Islamic community. Crime is crime. People are punished for their crimes. Once someone is willing to commit a crime, they are ususally past the point where they care what the punishment is... Hate crimes would be a crime of passion and those are the hardest to stop... Like I said it starts with education of tolerance early and often.

[IndianaJones]

19. Hate crimes are not a crime of passion...hate crime legislation is...

designed to punish conduct. Conduct that has a wider impact on society than just the underlying offense.

[glowing]

14. Yes, so its society that must learn and teach tolerance... A crime is

a failure on society. Why the shock and disbelief when something like this happens? Look at our fearless leader... inciting hate and fear on the Islamic community. Crime is crime. People are punished for their crimes. Once someone is willing to commit a crime, they are ususally past the point where they care what the punishment is... Hate crimes would be a crime of passion and those are the hardest to stop... Like I said it starts with education of tolerance early and often.

[abq e streeter]

23. negative impact

And you are right of course, but beyond impact, hate crimes , by definition are meant to intimidate whole groups of people.( and I'm sure this is exactly what you meant) This is why I've long thought that using the term hate crime is counterproductive. It makes it sound like we're advocating enhanced penalties or special classification for an isolated individual crime based on who the victim is. What needs to be emphasized to the average person is the group intimidation aspect, and this is why I wish we could change the wording of these laws to crimes of mass intimidation or something like that. I believe that kind of terminology would make it more difficult to oppose the establishment of these types of laws and easier for an undecided middle of the road or even conservative person to understand the need for them and therefore support the idea of having them.

[Bluebear]

8. Matt Shepard was not a crime of passion. nt

[glowing]

18. Sorry, I don't know the details.

[Bluebear]

21. Matt was tortured and murdered specifically because of his being gay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard

[glowing]

27. Well if it wasn't a crime of passion than it can't be a hate crime.

Hate would insinuate that their was an emotional response that made them lash out in hatred. Underlyng cause would suggest they totures were taught to hate gay people young. It made them think that a gay person was not human and therefore subjective to torture. Similar to Nazi's using the Aryian blood thing to justify torturing "weaker" humans. Its a societal thing. Teaching tolerance and equality at a young age will alleviate these pains. By creating isolatory groups, we are saying that people are not equal in this country. 100 yrs from now say my granchild is at a rally: She is speaking against the tyranny of a political party, a riot breaks out, she is then taken and tried for hate crimes. That's where this law could go. Equality for all does not mean to continue isolating groups of people into classes. It causes problems.

[IndianaJones]

30. hate crimes are not crimes of passion. hatred is not a passion....

it is a world view.

[RaleighNCDUer]

34. You misunderstand the meaning of 'hate crime'.

By conflating 'hate' as a passion with 'hate' as a social motivator, you are dismissing the socio-political overtones of 'hate crime'. As a social motivator hate is not a blinding passion, but a deeply held bigotry, and a hate crime is not a hatred of the individual but the bigotry toward the group of which the individual is merely a symbol - a hate crime is not committed against the individual but against the group, and any of that group who happened to be in the same place at the same time would be treated the same way. There is actually less passion involved in a hate crime than in a personal crime, because of the degree of abstraction involved, making a single indivudual the scapegoat for the group.

[VP505]

25. Trouble with your

take on hate crime law is that it doesn't consider that if victim wasn't a_____ or whatever the crime likely wouldn't have been committed. Example, a man or woman is walking down the street minding hs own business, Gomer and Goober are standing on the corner and one says to the other, Look there goes a _____ let have some fun, they approach the victim and start pushing him/her around, eventually they start kicking and punching the victim, the victim is caused severe mortal injury and dies. Had that victim not been perceived to be someone or something Comer and Goober disliked and had no respect for its likely that they would not have approach and battered the victim. On top of the victim's death all the other people in the community perceived to be a _______ will now have a fear that it could happen to them. BTW, teaching love is wonderful but with near 300 million people in this country many of whom are old enough to be set in their ways, its gonna be a loooong time before everyone learns to love everyone else. Jail is appropriate for those set in their ways, with a longer sentence (Hate Crime Enhancement) to allow them to learn to love.

[HamdenRice]

5. here are some background concepts that make this comprehensible

The first thing to keep in mind is that criminal law does not just punish "acts". It usually punishes "acts" plus "intent" or some other "mental state."

If Joe hits Slick in the head with a baseball bat, that is an act. We don't yet know what the crime is.

If they were playing baseball, and Slick was the catcher and got too close to the batters box, then there was no crime at all because there was no criminal intent; it was an accident. If Joe hit Slick because Slick had just announced that he was sleeping with Joe's wife, then that's a crime committed in the heat of passion. If Joe hit Slick with the baseball bat because Joe and Slick got drunk together and decided to act out a scene from Goodfellas, and Joe had intended to only swing near and pretend to hit Slick, but because of his drunkeness, his aim was bad, that would be yet a different mental status and different crime for the same act. If Joe planned for several weeks to find Slick on the street, bash Slick in the head and steal his wallet, that's yet a different mental state and a different crime.

Hate crimes legislation adds yet another mental state as a basis for defining a crime and that mental state adds to the severity of the crime -- namely the intent to hurt someone for reasons of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

Once you understand the role of mental states in criminal law, you will understand that hate crimes are not as "strange" as many laymen think they are.

[The Magistrate]

11. Well Done, Mr. Rice, And Most Helpful

[racaulk]

15. Excellent post!

Thank you for posting this. :)

[Canuckistanian]

6. A simple analogy - graffiti

If you were to write some graffiti on an office building that said "Gangsta Rap Rulz", you should be charged for defacing property or mischief.

If you wrote "Sieg Heil" with swastikas on a Jewish gravestone, that's a hate crime.

Any otherwise minor crime that expresses a threat, implied or inferred to a group of people merits extra punishment.

[IndianaJones]

7. I am clear on what constitutes hate crimes...

I am looking for details on the frequency of application and the difficulty in proving a hate crime was committed (in addition to an undelying crime).

[Bluebear]

9. Could you explain what your desired answer is & we can work backwards?

:hi:

[IndianaJones]

16. in my discussions with those opposing hate crime legislation...

I often hear implausible hypotheticals used to argue that such laws are a bad idea. Example: white guy carjacks a black guy and gets slapped with a hate crime, as if it is a simple thing for the goverment to attach a hate crime conviction to any crime involving a minority. My understanding is that hate crimes are rare, and there is an extra burden on the state to prove a crime was indeed a hate crime, in addition to the underlying offense. Is this correct? I was not under the impression that they were handing out hate crime tickets like it was jaywalking.

[Bluebear]

20. Hamden's post above is an excellent tutorial you can give to those opposed to hate crimes

[IndianaJones]

22. I actually disagree somewhat with this characterization...

I see hate crimes legislation putting in place a more severe punishment for an individual that commits a crime that harms the victim, the community and society in a way that exceeds the effects of the underlying offense. In my mind, the hate crime laws punish conduct and not intent.

[HamdenRice]

31. Check post 5, then ... here are two answers

The thing to keep in mind is that in almost all violent crimes, the jury has to determine the mens rea, or criminal state of mind, of the defendant. Hate crimes simply adds another kind of mens rea that may be proven and that affects sentencing.

Is it a separate part of the prosecution...prove the underlying crime and then show that it was a hate crime?

Depends on what you mean by separate. Juries or other triers of fact usually have to affirmatively decide what the state of mind of the defendant was. But this is not in a separate procedure or separate jury proceeding.

Does the jury decide on each component individually?

In most jurisdictions, just as the jury has to determine the state of mind as an individual finding, the jury has to determine the discriminatory state of mind as an individual finding.

[Canuckistanian]

35. Sorry, I misunderstood your post

Seems to me it's one of those 'reasonable standard' sort of things, like libel or defamation.

[IndianaJones]

36. no problem...maybe could have been a little more clear. nt.

[mmonk]

12. Hate crimes involve more than just a particular crime.

It crosses into civil rights violations as well. Therefore, the penalty should reflect that.

[TechBear_Seattle]

26. Hate crimes are terrorist acts, not merely criminal acts

The idea is that hate crimes target not so much a specific victim as they target an entire community which the victim is (or is assumed to be) a member. As such, they are considered a graver threat, with a more severe penalty.

[originalpckelly]

28. You think it's wrong to prosecute someone based upon their motive?

I guess you can throw out attempted murder charges, domestic violence charges, and anything else that relies upon the motive of a suspect (that's what they were thinking when they committed the crime by the way, or at least as best we can determine that from the physical evidence.)

[IndianaJones]

29. huh? nt.

[originalpckelly]

32. Think about it:

If someone on the street pulls out a gun and discharges it while it is aimed at you, and for one reason or another misses the mark and you live, the person would be charged with attempted murder.

Why not just call it the unlawful discharge of a weapon in a public space?

Why should we care that the person almost tried to kill you?

How do we know that's what they were thinking?

Isn't prosecuting someone based upon their thoughts like prosecuting thought crime?

As you see, the very same question apply to any crime with "attempted" in front of it. Yet, I rarely hear people bitch and moan about those laws.

It's fairly clear that when someone is calling another person the gay f-word, and continues taunting them until they escalate the situation into violence, that the violence was motivated by bigoted hate. Just as it serves society better to prosecute someone attempted murderer and not for unlawful discharge of a weapon on a public street, it serves society better to prosecute someone with a hate crime than with standard assault (or murder). If the motive is damaging to society and appears from all physical evidence to be bigoted hate, then we ought to prosecute.

I must say, not too long ago I also held the position that it was wrong to prosecute for what a criminal was thinking at the time of a crime, I bought into the BS, until I remembered attempted crimes which do the same exact thing, albeit without conservative criticism.

[IndianaJones]

33. what are you trying to convince me of here? nt.

[Fleshdancer]

37. That motive is taken into consideration for a variety of crimes

Hate crime legislation takes into account another type of motive in violent crimes.

[IndianaJones]

38. my original question had more to do with procedure and frequency of application. nt.