I believe Dagonee explained this previously, but I want to reiterate something about hate crimes.
The point of hate crime legislation is not that a person is victimized because of their color or sexual orientation or religion, but that the crime was committed in order to send a hateful message to inspire fear in an entire community of people, not just the victim.
I can understand people who think that laws against the specific crime ought to be enough to punish the perpetrator, but society in general seems to be ignorant of what hate crime legislation is for. If more people knew, I think that fewer people would object to it.
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quote:But we know that that young man was killed in the commitment [sic] of a robbery - it wasn't because he was gay
We do?
--j_k
Seriously! Even if she was right (heaven knows where she got this version of the story), how on earth do you say it's right for two guys to abduct a robber, pistol whip him, take him out to the middle of nowhere, beat him, tie him to a fence, and then leave him to freeze to death, with a straight face?
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She wasn't saying that he was a robber. She was saying that he was killed during a robbery. That they killed him because they were just robbers and not because they were bigoted homophobic slime.
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This is a very timely issue for me, beacause I just finished performing in a production of "The Laramie Project." Our show closed last week, and tonight (unrelated to our project, but related to another production happening at the same time) Judy Shephard, Matt's mother, came and spoke at a local college. There were rumors about the WBC coming to picket, but that didn't transpire, thankfully. I'm just amazed at the ignorance that is still pervasive about the murder of Matthew Shephard.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: She wasn't saying that he was a robber. She was saying that he was killed during a robbery. That they killed him because they were just robbers and not because they were bigoted homophobic slime.
Hmm...you might be right, I didn't see it that way. In either case I don't know where she got her version of the story from.
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I agree that they were slime. I don't agree that that makes the murder worse than if he was beaten and killed for his wallet.
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quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: I can understand people who think that laws against the specific crime ought to be enough to punish the perpetrator, but society in general seems to be ignorant of what hate crime legislation is for. If more people knew, I think that fewer people would object to it.
Respectfully, I don't believe that a crime should be prosecuted according to the supposed intentions of the perpetrators- unless those intentions would reflect positively on their actions. For instance, I support leniency for a many who robs a bank because he's desperately trying to save his family from some disaster (hypothetically) and I think he should be punished, but the motivation remembered. However, if he robs the bank intending to use the money to buy drugs and prostitutes and publish horrible novels, then I think the punishment should not be worse than it already would be.
Not that I don't personally think "hate crimes" as they are termed are worse for society than other crimes, because I do. However, the use of hate crime legislation politicizes individual cases where the rights of the accused need to be respected- individual crimes should not be political issues.
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I thought the killers used the defense that Shepard hitting on them icked them out and they went temporarily insane. If they are one time tried to excuse their actions because the victim was gay, how can anyone claim that it wasn't at all motivated by his crime.
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I can understand people who think that laws against the specific crime ought to be enough to punish the perpetrator, but society in general seems to be ignorant of what hate crime legislation is for. If more people knew, I think that fewer people would object to it.
Respectfully, I don't believe that a crime should be prosecuted according to the supposed intentions of the perpetrators- unless those intentions would reflect positively on their actions. For instance, I support leniency for a many who robs a bank because he's desperately trying to save his family from some disaster (hypothetically) and I think he should be punished, but the motivation remembered. However, if he robs the bank intending to use the money to buy drugs and prostitutes and publish horrible novels, then I think the punishment should not be worse than it already would be.
The comparison you're making here doesn't quite match up to the intention behind hate crimes laws.
In your robbing-the-bank scenario, the dude robbing the bank does so entirely for himself. That is, the drugs and prostitutes will be used by him, for his pleasure, and the horrible novels don't actually hurt anyone.
In a hypothetical hate-crimes case, if some group of, say, sheet-wearing sleazes beat to death and then desecrate the body of a black guy while shouting how furious they are that he was seen publicly with a white woman, interspersed with nonspecific threats against other black men dating other white women?
That's a bit different. There's an added intention there to put a very real, very serious fear for life and limb into other people not present at the time of the crime.
quote:However, the use of hate crime legislation politicizes individual cases where the rights of the accused need to be respected- individual crimes should not be political issues.
Does the accused have a right to freedom of speech if their 'speech' is mated with a violent crime that intends to terrorize others? I can see how someone could have problems with hate crime legislation on the grounds of intent, where it exists and when and how it's proven, but when the intent is clear beyond a reasonable doubt, I don't see how any kind of rights are being violated if there is additional punishment for it.
Also, is there some reason individual crimes should not be political issues? For example, the three late famous civil rights workers in `64, should that not have been partially a political issue? It was a crime very much motivated, among other things, by politics.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Respectfully, I don't believe that a crime should be prosecuted according to the supposed intentions of the perpetrators- unless those intentions would reflect positively on their actions.
So a person who spray paints his initials on the side of a building should get the same punishment as someone who spraypaints a swastika and "Die Jews Die" on the side of a synagogue?
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Respectfully, I don't believe that a crime should be prosecuted according to the supposed intentions of the perpetrators- unless those intentions would reflect positively on their actions.
So a person who spray paints his initials on the side of a building should get the same punishment as someone who spraypaints a swastika and "Die Jews Die" on the side of a synagogue?
Yes. Both acts are crimes. But I must point out that these are not equivalent acts either- if one can be shown to be undertaken specifically as a threat, not just as "inciting fear," then I think they should be taken differently. But beating someone up is inciting fear in that person, and in others. The reason for the action could be many things, race and creed being only some of them. Why assign specific punitive action because of the status of the victim?
Beating someone up because he is gay is the same crime as beating somebody up because he is an asshole. We just like the gay people better, but that doesn't make the crime worse in my opinion- they are the same actions.
quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: Think of it is small scale terrorism and hate crimes legislation will make more sense.
But it is not terrorism. Terrorism is a concerted effort to intimidate for political and ideological purposes. For one, acts of terrorism, by their nature, usually constitute criminal conspiracies. Many hate crimes are not conspiracies, but isolated actions undertaken at random. Prosecute "hate crimes" as terrorism if that's what you think they are, but I expect that juries wouldn't buy that case against a bunch of rednecks who beat up a gay guy for no good reason. They're not terrorists, they're bigots. I have nothing but contempt for them, but we need a criminal justice system that makes sense, and this doesn't make sense to me.
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I don't understand some of the claims made here. Motives are nearly always considered in sentencing criminals. Hate crimes legislation isn't an exception, its the rule. Nearly all crimes in the US have a range of sentences that the judge can give for the crime. Motive is nearly always a key factor in determination of the sentence.
If you kill somebody, we even have completely different charges (1st degree, 2nd degree, voluntary man slaughter . . .) and the distinction between them is motivation of the perpetrator. If you are really serious about what you are saying, then the logical conclusion is that the guy who kills a pedestrian with his car, deserves life in prison regardless of whether he just wasn't paying attention or he'd been planning it for weeks.
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quote:Terrorism is a concerted effort to intimidate for political and ideological purposes.
That sounds like intent to me.
Of course, we prosecute people for intent all the time. For instance, the verifiable intent to commit many crimes is frequently itself a crime. A conspiracy is a group of people sharing an intent (which makes me find it funny that you gave it as a differentiator).
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I think intent matters, and that's exactly what bothers me. If the intent is to kill someone so they die in pain, it doesn't matter why they want the person to die in pain.
There is a difference between intent and motivation.
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quote:But it is not terrorism. Terrorism is a concerted effort to intimidate for political and ideological purposes.
At what point does isolated violent racism and prejudice morph into terrorism, then?
For example, once upon a time, what would become the National Socialist German Workers' Party was just a bunch of small nationalist-leaning groups located in Germany. Yet surely we can agree that along the way, well before they took national power, individuals among them committed acts of terrorism that bore a striking resemblence to ordinary, individual crimes.
quote:They're not terrorists, they're bigots. I have nothing but contempt for them, but we need a criminal justice system that makes sense, and this doesn't make sense to me.
Why not? I don't understand how punishing an intent coupled with a violent action to put fear into a group of people being punished more severely than simply the action itself is problematic. Because the spreading of fear is also an action.
It's not legal to make death threats, either, or to threaten that others will be beaten unmercifully. In fact it can be illegal to even vaguely allude to such a threat, in some circumstances...so why not when the 'allusion' is a vicious attack?
Also, there's the question of why if good intentions matter, bad intentions should be completely disregarded?
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One thing is to consider is that the individual who is beaten or murdered is not the only intended victim.
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Well, of course. I mean in a thread like this.
quote:We know the intention - to cause pain and kill.
The intention does matter. The motivation shouldn't when the intention is so malevolent already.
I think it's safe to say there is an intent to kill in all murders, naturally. However, in some cases there is a further intention: to spread fear and hatred.
You seem to be suggesting that once the intention reaches a certain height (or depth, rather) of depravity and sadism, nothing else should be considered. If so, why is that? Isn't it better to in all cases consider the entirety of the situation, whether the big picture is further sickening or not?
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I think it's also worth considering the effect on law enforcement. There are communities where the local police might be tempted to be lenient with the perpetrators of the crime if they were sympathetic with the criminals' motives. Hate crime legislation can help make it clear that the lawmakers are on the books as opposing leniency based on particular intent, and possibly weed out law enforcers who might show such leniency.
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quote:However, in some cases there is a further intention: to spread fear and hatred.
In the case of the graffitti, I think you can prove that. In the case this thread is named after, I don't think you can without corroborating evidence.
That concerns me - that the sentences will be disporportionate based not on evidence to spread fear but based on who the victim is. Like you can't be a minority or a female and be just a mugging victim. Or that someone can't be in a killing mood without intending to make everyone who has your face afraid.
For all the press, I haven't heard of any evidence that there was intention of spreading terror other than the beating and death itself.
And...yeah: once it is an isolated incident and the intent is to kill you while you are in pain, it doesn't matter why.
quote:There are communities where the local police might be tempted to be lenient with the perpetrators of the crime if they were sympathetic with the criminals' motives. Hate crime legislation can help make it clear that the lawmakers are on the books as opposing leniency based on particular intent, and possibly weed out law enforcers who might show such leniency.
That's a bad justification for an increase in thought policing. If the concern is to curb corruption, then enforcing the laws on the books right now will do just fine.
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quote:In the case of the graffitti, I think you can prove that. In the case this thread is named after, I don't think you can without corroborating evidence.
I'm all for restricting hate crimes prosecution in cases where intent isn't proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
However, I also don't think the intent has to be as explicit as neon-colored grafitti on a wall telling a certain group to die, either. "Queers better watch out!" coupled with a murder of a homoesexual, whether it's said before, during, or afterwards, would be sufficient for me.
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quote: However, in some cases there is a further intention: to spread fear and hatred.
Honestly, I don't think many individuals that commit hate crimes truly set out to spread fear and hatred. It usually isn't until individuals form groups and pool that anger into a communal pit that a solid intention to spread fear and hatred erupts (a la the KKK). But of course, that's just an opinion.
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Generally, to qualify as a hate crime, there needs to be more to it then just that the victim is of a certain demographic. There usually needs to be some indicator that it was racially targeted. So, if I robbed say a black woman, it wouldn't be a hate crime. If I robbed the same black woman and shouted at her that black people don't deserve money, then it is a hate crime. I think the hate crime designation is very similar to increases for premeditated crimes. With a hate crime, some planning ahead has occurred- if only in victim selection.
I do personally know one victim of a hate crime and in his case, I think it was clear that the criminal was intending to send a larger message then just one stabbing. My friend was leaving a gay bar and was stabbed by a man shouting "Jesus hates fa@$#%" His choice of location and victim was a message to every gay person in that community.
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quote:So, if I robbed say a black woman, it wouldn't be a hate crime. If I robbed the same black woman and shouted at her that black people don't deserve money, then it is a hate crime.
If this is what a hate crime is, then it definitely shouldn't be treated differently. Why does it matter that he did it because of race? If he stole my wallet, clearly he thinks I don't deserve money. It doesn't matter why.
The "attempted terrorism" has a little bit of traction, as long it can be corroborated and is supported by something like a statement or attempt to communiate that "[whoever] better watch out." But in that sample cited, it just isn't justified.
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Orincoro, please explain the difference between your statement:
quote:a concerted effort to intimidate for political and ideological purposes.
And mine:
quote: in order to send a hateful message to inspire fear in an entire community of people
Hint: to intimidate is to inspire fear.
Kat:
quote:We know the intention - to cause pain and kill.
I'll borrow my response from JTK.
quote:We do?
Matthew Shepard was left to die hanging on a fence. This has historic connotations of intimidation. The English used gibbets. Vlad Ţepeş impaled his enemies on tall stakes. Then there's this story about a guy who was hung on a wooden fixture about 2000 years ago that's pretty popular. Lots of cultures use the remains of their enemies as "decorations" in order to inspire fear in their enemies, or criminals. The point of all these cases is not merely to cause pain and kill, but to let other people know that the same fate awaits them, in order to prevent some kind of behavior.
Now, there was a case some time ago (I believe it was the one Dag was commenting on) where a black girl was abducted, raped, and tortured, specifically because she was black, but it wasn't prosecuted as a hate crime because the criminals didn't do anything to use the girl as an example to others. Was it hate inspired crime? Absolutely. But it wasn't considered a hate crime, by the definition of the law.
Scholarette:
quote:There usually needs to be some indicator that it was racially targeted.
More accurately, the hatred has to be targeted at a race of people, not just the specific victim.
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quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: [QB] Orincoro, please explain the difference between your statement: [QUOTE]a concerted effort to intimidate for political and ideological purposes.
And mine:
quote: in order to send a hateful message to inspire fear in an entire community of people
Hint: to intimidate is to inspire fear.
There is no substantive difference aside from intent.
Terrorism is undertaken specifically, with premeditation, in order to intimidate. "Hate crimes" as the examples presented have demonstrated, are carried out against individuals as a result of bigotry. I think if you can prove the intent to intimidate a whole class of people in a hate crime, (ie: prove a conspiracy), then the "hate crime" model is no different from terrorism. But to prosecute and assign punitive damages according to the *effects* of a crime on a community overreaches the bounds of juris prudence- the original punishments for various crimes should have been established as harsh enough to deal with the effects of any crime, regardless of motivation. If the crime is indeed an act of terrorism, carried out specifically in order to inspire fear, then I think it's plainly a different crime.
I have no interest in arguing that any of the crimes discussed are somehow diminished because they don't meet my personal standard for terrorism, I just think we traverse dangerous territory when we attempt to politicize any crime undertaken by an individual. Hate crime legislation politicizes crime by recognizing the special status of the offended or attacked group.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: However, I also don't think the intent has to be as explicit as neon-colored grafitti on a wall telling a certain group to die, either. "Queers better watch out!" coupled with a murder of a homoesexual, whether it's said before, during, or afterwards, would be sufficient for me.
I agree generally. If the crime is undertaken with intimidation of others according to creed, sexuality, race, or political affiliation in mind, and that intent is CLEARLY STATED, then it is more than the original act. But that intent must be clear, not just through the outcome, but clear beyond a reasonable doubt.
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quote:I agree generally. If the crime is undertaken with intimidation of others according to creed, sexuality, race, or political affiliation in mind, and that intent is CLEARLY STATED, then it is more than the original act. But that intent must be clear, not just through the outcome, but clear beyond a reasonable doubt.
Why must this explicit intent be so very clear? If you don't intend to shoot someone during the commission of a robbery, but do anyway (even if it's an accident) you can still be charged with murder.
So if the intent to spread fear isn't foremost in your mind, but that is one very obvious result of your actions, why should you be free from consequence for that particular action?
quote:Hate crime legislation politicizes crime by recognizing the special status of the offended or attacked group.
Well, in my personal opinion, 'hate crimes' should be a term that applies when anything like this happens.
If a black man murders a white man in Omaha, Nebraska and does so shouting, "Whitey better watch out!" I think he should be prosecuted both for the murder and for a hate crime.
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quote: I think if you can prove the intent to intimidate a whole class of people in a hate crime, (ie: prove a conspiracy)
There is no conspiracy necessary. Terrorists can act alone or in groups, so can perpetrators of hate crime.
quote: If the crime is undertaken with intimidation of others according to creed, sexuality, race, or political affiliation in mind, and that intent is CLEARLY STATED, then it is more than the original act. But that intent must be clear, not just through the outcome, but clear beyond a reasonable doubt.
So if they monologue like good villains they can be prosecuted for hate crime, but if they claim they hung the noose in a tree as a joke they can't? Come on. As I said in my previous post, displaying a body as a symbolic deterrent goes back a long way.
Whether it would be possible to gain a conviction for a hate crime is a different story, since Matthew is dead, and the girlfriends changed their stories. But the question of hate crime legislation has nothing to do with a particular case, but whether it should be possible to bring about such prosecution at all. Assuming the girlfriends initial stories were true, then Henderson and McKinney should have been prosecuted for a hate crime, but this option didn't exist.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: That's a bad justification for an increase in thought policing. If the concern is to curb corruption, then enforcing the laws on the books right now will do just fine.
Hmm. Inflammatory, discussion-discouraging, and missing the point.
Law enforcement by its nature has room for a lot of personal judgement. This person gets off with a warning; this person gets a ticket. This is youthful indiscretion that we'll overlook; this is behavior that is harmful to the community and will receive the harshest treatment. This is battery and warrants probation; this is attempted murder, and warrants hard time. And it may be the same action that brings about each of these decisions, except that the perpetrator or suspect appears to the enforcer in question to be something they don't like- black, Jewish, Muslim, homosexual.
Consider the Brandon Teena case, which was made into the movie Boys Don't Cry. If the matter had been taken seriously by law enforcement, a murder might have been prevented; instead, the transexual victim was subjected to scrutiny that made him/her seem like the perpetrator, and the authorities neglected to act on the earlier crimes.
These are not in a conventional sense matters of "corruption", but of perspective and prejudice. If an officer lets someone who yells a racial slur at someone and slams them against a wall off with a warning because they privately think members of the victim's racial group are responsible for the downturn of the neighborhood, there's a good chance there will never be a report on the event, and that even if it comes to a complaint against the officer that it will be dismissed as a matter of personal, professional judgement. If the state declares that such matters are to be taken seriously, they may receive a level of oversight and consideration that actually prevents them from happening again and makes those who might sympathize with the perpetrators hesitate to be seen as complicit in the crimes.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: That's a bad justification for an increase in thought policing.
Thought policing, eh? I wasn't aware that anyone had been arrested for thinking about something yet.
I'm gonna think something about you real hard, and if you don't hear back from me, you know the cops got me and you were right.
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quote: I think if you can prove the intent to intimidate a whole class of people in a hate crime, (ie: prove a conspiracy)
There is no conspiracy necessary. Terrorists can act alone or in groups, so can perpetrators of hate crime.
Don't be obtuse- you know that terrorism is itself an act undertaken not against an individual, but against a group. Hate crime legislation wants to define a crime against an individual according to its consequences for larger groups. I don't buy that. I don't even buy stronger penalties because any particular crime carried racial, sexual, or ideological motivations. Yes, if the criminal doesn't monologue and share the details of his/her thinking, then the motive for the crime should not be assumed as an implication against them. You talk about displays of bodies and public violence, but killers do those things even when the crimes they commit are not racially motivated. Should we prosecute them for a "fear crime?" It's already a murder, and the punishment for murder is already duly severe.
Aside from all this, I have simply not seen any evidence that hate crime legislation will change the outcomes of any particular case, either by stopping a crime, or by somehow paying reparation to the injured group. I think it is dangerous to offer politically motivated punishments for certain criminals and expect that to enhance your ability to stop these crimes. If it is about punishment, then I see no reason why the heinousness of the crime wold not be sufficient enough to warrant whatever punishment is necessary in any given case. But when we allow sentencing to be established by politicians, we get 3 strikes laws, we get mandatory minimums for drug offenders, and other very consequential trends.
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quote:Don't be obtuse- you know that terrorism is itself an act undertaken not against an individual, but against a group.
Who's being obtuse here? A conspiracy is an act that is planned and undertaken BY a group of people. Not against a group of people.
You're somehow reversing the perpetrator and the victim. I'll say it again: a terrorist or a criminal can operate as an individual. You can't prove a conspiracy against an individual.
quote:you know that terrorism is itself an act undertaken not against an individual, but against a group
Exactly. When Hamas take a single hostage, or kills an individual, they are acting against a group. Likewise, when the KKK carries out an act against an individual Black person, they are acting against a group. And when Matthew Shepard's body is left hanging like a scarecrow on a fence, it's intended (as per Henderson and McKinney's girlfriends' original testimony) to intimidate a larger group.
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quote:Don't be obtuse- you know that terrorism is itself an act undertaken not against an individual, but against a group. Hate crime legislation wants to define a crime against an individual according to its consequences for larger groups. I don't buy that. I don't even buy stronger penalties because any particular crime carried racial, sexual, or ideological motivations.
Talking of obtuse, I'm not sure who in this thread has suggested hate crimes penalties should be invoked when all that exists is hatred of a group motives. Or that it should be invoked only if there are consequences for larger groups.
quote:You talk about displays of bodies and public violence, but killers do those things even when the crimes they commit are not racially motivated. Should we prosecute them for a "fear crime?" It's already a murder, and the punishment for murder is already duly severe.
Actually, since the vast majority of murders are crimes of passion, the display of bodies and public violence is usually incidental. Different thing.
quote: Aside from all this, I have simply not seen any evidence that hate crime legislation will change the outcomes of any particular case, either by stopping a crime, or by somehow paying reparation to the injured group.
How could there be any evidence? It would have to be tried first.
quote:If it is about punishment, then I see no reason why the heinousness of the crime wold not be sufficient enough to warrant whatever punishment is necessary in any given case.
It could be enough to take something from 25-life to 25-life with no possibility of parole. That'd be satisfactory.
quote:But when we allow sentencing to be established by politicians, we get 3 strikes laws, we get mandatory minimums for drug offenders, and other very consequential trends.
Sentencing is already established by politicians. Judges in many places are politicians.
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quote:It could be enough to take something from 25-life to 25-life with no possibility of parole.
Kind of off-topic, but life with no parole is a funny sentence that should be used sparingly. It's a recipe for 80-year-old men taking up needless space in prison.
Of course, you're talking about 25-life...
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quote:Don't be obtuse- you know that terrorism is itself an act undertaken not against an individual, but against a group.
Who's being obtuse here? A conspiracy is an act that is planned and undertaken BY a group of people. Not against a group of people.
You're somehow reversing the perpetrator and the victim. I'll say it again: a terrorist or a criminal can operate as an individual. You can't prove a conspiracy against an individual.
Which is why I said terrorism is usually a conspiracy, (of course not always) and is specifically targeted at groups of people, not just the direct victims of the action- else it's just a bombing or a shooting, not an act of terror or a political act. I don't think racially motivated crime that is not done for political purposes is terrorism, and I think calling it a hate crime is fine if you want, but we already have laws against terrorism that deal with such acts.
I would like to know what is so important about meting out extra punishment for an already heinous crime. Is murder or assault or vandalism or threatening speech not bad enough?
quote:
quote: Aside from all this, I have simply not seen any evidence that hate crime legislation will change the outcomes of any particular case, either by stopping a crime, or by somehow paying reparation to the injured group
How could there be any evidence? It would have to be tried first.
That is not sufficient reason for experimentation in my view. We do have experience with politicizing prosecution, and that experience has shown that it does neither the criminal justice system, nor the victims, nor the accused any good. This is why we have so many people in prison for drug offenses, why we continue to use the death penalty despite its lack of effectiveness at preventing murders. Do you think that if the death penalty doesn't dissuade someone from committing a premeditated crime in which they might happen to kill someone, that hate crime legislation will have some effect? Is hate crime legislation all about retribution? If so, I'm not a fan. I don't think the criminal justice system should be geared towards political or personal retribution of wrongs.
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quote:you know that terrorism is itself an act undertaken not against an individual, but against a group
Exactly. When Hamas take a single hostage, or kills an individual, they are acting against a group. Likewise, when the KKK carries out an act against an individual Black person, they are acting against a group. And when Matthew Shepard's body is left hanging like a scarecrow on a fence, it's intended (as per Henderson and McKinney's girlfriends' original testimony) to intimidate a larger group.
I agree that if Hamas or the KKK were to do these things as you describe, then it would be an act of terrorism. Good, we have laws against that. Mathew Shepherd's case would simply be much, much harder to prove as equivalent to one undertaken by a terrorist group with political designs. There is a lot in that case- the idea that the defendants had intended to rob him, that they had only met him that night, that they were not known to be anti-gay activists. Simply, it was thought that Shepherd was killed because he was gay. I'm sorry, but that's a crime already. Why does it need to be a different kind of crime- because you really really want it to be? I worry about enacting these kinds of things based on public mood, which is exactly what the Shepherd case has been used for.
quote:
quote: But when we allow sentencing to be established by politicians, we get 3 strikes laws, we get mandatory minimums for drug offenders, and other very consequential trends.
Sentencing is already established by politicians. Judges in many places are politicians.
And you see no problem with that? You like it when it works in favor of something you want? Do you like the fact that there are people in prison who by any reasonable standard should not be, because their crimes were politically important issues? (I'm talking about the very silliest of the 3 strike offenses, the mandatory minimums involving small or even tiny amounts of drugs, etc).
Edit: But look, you know exactly what I'm afraid of. The application of hate crime status to extremely marginal cases involving people of different races or creeds, sexes or orientations. I'm not at all encouraged to believe that prosecutors or judges will put their rational hats on when dealing with politically important cases that may come their way. We need to air strongly on the side of caution, and the defendants' rights, in every criminal case.
posted
The alternative to sentencing by politicians is..... what, exactly? Politicians are people. Their ideas are no more or less flawed than anyone else's.
People have this notion that "politics" is something separate from the real world. Politics is merely ideas that end up having an effect on public policy. Terrorists killing people to send a message that the US should remove their support of Israel boils down to "We hate Jews and want to strike fear into them and anyone who would support them." Why is that any different than an individual taking it upon themselves to kill a Jew, desecrate the body and hang it for the world to see?
Both actions are bigoted. If they end up having an effect on the community at large, both end up being political.
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: Both actions are bigoted. If they end up having an effect on the community at large, both end up being political.
You're arguing my point.
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Um, how? You were the one saying there was somehow a difference between terrorism and a hate-crime.
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No, I was saying that there is no difference between the two as they have been described here. And since we have laws against terrorism, there is no need for more laws against hate crime, if acts of terrorism are indistinguishable from hate crimes. Now I realize that "hate crimes" as you would like them to be prosecuted would be different from terrorism. I don't agree with that viewpoint.
I simply don't find that any extra level of punishment or retribution is necessary or even proper in dealing with "hate crimes," as you describe them. Again, and for the last time, if you want to describe any particular crime as an act of terrorism, then I think that's what you should do. But the reason people want to make "hate crime" a different crime from terrorism is because the motivations in these hate crimes are much harder to prove than in most acts of terror, and convincing anybody that the Shepherd killing, for instance, was terrorism would never work. An act of terrorism is usually very clear, by intention- it is the object of an act of terrorism for the terrorist to take credit for the act and assign blame to someone else, or at the very least to have some political effect for any given cause. Hate crimes would not be clear by intention, they would quite ad hoc and unique in every case, and that doesn't set firm ground for fair prosecution.
And besides, I don't believe that because someone committed a crime out of hate for the attributes of another, that the punishment should be any worse. Why does one person who kills a random stranger deserve 25 to life, while someone who kills another person because he is gay deserve life without parole? What makes you think the first person is any more capable of changing than the second? Have we decided simply that the criminal justice system is in the business of retribution rather than keeping peace and rehabilitating offenders and protecting society? This is why I am against the death penalty and mandatory minimums in the first place, as well as the loss of the right to vote for felons. The prison industry is a business today, and don't kid yourself into believing that there isn't an interest among certain people, a financial interest, in making sure the most people spend the most time in prison as possible, because however bad it may be for society, some people stand to profit from it. We must always proceed with extreme care in these matters, and yet extreme care is quite the opposite of what I've seen happening in crime legislation- and precisely because it is so easy for us to despise the criminals, it is easiest for us to dismiss the long term and profoundly important consequences of these decisions.
I'm really not interested in having this argument beyond what I've said. I will not be convinced here. because my mind is quite made up, as I suspect yours is, so I won't say anything else.
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If that's really what you've been arguing this whole time, I don't think you've been very clear at all. The people arguing in the "Hate crimes are a good thing to have a separate punishment for" camp were not arguing Hate Crimes should be worse/different from terrorism, they were arguing they are worse/different than murder. They were using terrorism as an example of WHY all murders are not committed equal.
Now, if you're officially saying that Hate Crimes SHOULD exist but should be classified under Terrorism, I can get behind that (and I suspect most of the pro-hate-crime-legislation camp might at least consider it). The only problem (which i guess applies to both) is that hate crimes and terrorism have both become loaded terms with specific connotations. They're similar, but I'm not sure they're quite identical.
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To be clear, the reason I think hate crimes and terrorism should be treated the same is that the only way a hate crime ever SHOULD be considered more than a murder is if it can be shown to be an act of terror. That should be extremely hard to do, and it should only be allowed to even be considered in the most extreme and plain of cases. I would accept hate crime legislation that intended to effect perhaps one or two cases in America every year.
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What is an 'act of terror'? And I can see invoking it in plain cases, but extreme? And why the arbitrary one or two cases a year?
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It seems to me there's plenty of room for "degrees of terrorism" just as there is room for degrees of murder.
However, one thing that occurs to me: there was a particular OSC worldwatch article I actually kinda agreed with, that our prison sentences and parole opportunities don't really do a good job of keeping the right criminals off the streets for the right reasons. The best example was along the lines of "violent criminals tend to be young and tend to become less violent as they get older," so they should be held long enough to be clear that they've calmed down. Whereas sexual offenders tend not to lose the basic drives that make them sex offenders and can never really be trusted except on a very short leash.
Meanwhile, psychopaths by definition are very good at telling people what they want to hear and can easily get out on parole for good behavior despite not having changed at all.
I have no idea the best way to go about it but I think the whole system could use an overhaul, and after it did our preconceptions of how to handle hate crimes might be irrelevant (or at least different).
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