Hate Crime Legislation

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If you support hate crime legislation, please give your case here.

My points:

1. Why should you be punished more for murdering someone out of hate than murdering someone to take their money?

2. How is it feasible to determine what is a hate crime and not? Shall we just assume that when a straight white person commits a crime against anyone who isn't straight and white, it's a hate crime?

3. Doesn't it just make sense to punish people for their actions which abridge other peoples' rights, instead of punishing them for their emotions?

4. It seems like hate crime legislation is a roundabout way of giving gay people more rights than straight people, and non-white people more rights than white people. Has anyone heard of any cases of a minority attacking a white person and getting charged with a hate crime?

[LaggyLou]

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Has anyone heard of any cases of a minority attacking a white person and getting charged with a hate crime?

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hahahahahahahahaha.

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WHITE PLAINS — The Westchester County District Attorney's Office is considering a hate-crime charge against a 43-year-old rapist accused of stabbing a legal secretary to death Wednesday, because he told police he had planned to kill a white woman, sources familiar with the case said yesterday.

Law-enforcement officials would not comment, but the sources said the District Attorney's Office would seek a grand jury indictment charging Phillip Grant, 43, with second-degree murder as a hate crime, based on his statements to investigators.

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link

Sorry to burst your bubble.

[BonJoviJones]

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1. Why should you be punished more for murdering someone out of hate than murdering someone to take their money?

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I'm not really for hate-crime laws, but surely motive can be taken in to account. A particularly heinous crime should come with a harsher punishment.

If you discard that argument, it's still possible that the reason the crime was commited in the first place might affect the likelyhood of ultimate rehabilitation.

In fact, if an insane person commits murder it is treated differently than a robbery-homicide, so it's not totally illogical to consider other motives that might warrent seperate attention.

[tylerdurden]

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In fact, if an insane person commits murder it is treated differently than a robbery-homicide, so it's not totally illogical to consider other motives that might warrent seperate attention.

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Insanity is a factor in intent, not motive.

[BCPVP]

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I'm not really for hate-crime laws, but surely motive can be taken in to account. A particularly heinous crime should come with a harsher punishment.

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Aggravating and mitigating circumstances. We already have these, so why the legislation? Could it be because politicans want another arrow in their quiver come election time?

[BonJoviJones]

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Aggravating and mitigating circumstances. We already have these, so why the legislation? Could it be because politicans want another arrow in their quiver come election time?

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It seems like you're for the enforcement of an anti-hate judicial system - but against it being codified in to law?

[BCPVP]

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It seems like you're for the enforcement of an anti-hate judicial system - but against it being codified in to law?

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It's redundant. Aggravating circumstances are circumstances that make the crime more severe. This is already considered in court, so the act of making a law (which could be too broad or too narrow) has no meaning. It's a waste of legislators' time and our money, and imo, is just another instance showing legislator X being "tough on crime".

[Dead]

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It's a waste of legislators' time and our money, and imo, is just another instance showing legislator X being "tough on crime".

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This sounds an awful lot like an argument against the drug war as well. So why don't you oppose the WOD, BCPVP?

[elwoodblues]

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it's still possible that the reason the crime was commited in the first place might affect the likelyhood of ultimate rehabilitation

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I would suspect that someone who lynches a black man because he is black is MUCH more likely to repeat offend than someone who murders a man he has found to be sleeping with his 3 year old daughter.

Hate crimes, like terrorism, also have a larger negative affect on society as a whole. The "victim" of a hate crime is both the actual victim as well as other members of the group who are terrorized by the thought that people are willing and able to kill them because of the fact that they sleep with people of the same sex as themselves.

In my mind, society is harmed to a much greater extent by hate motivated crime than by the sime crime with different motivations.

[ACPlayer]

Good post.

Your reasoning is also why it is OK to treat terrorists and (perhaps) alleged terrorists differently. No one wanted to handle the terrorist question in this thread, likely, because it conflicted with their view of how hate crimes should be treated.