Hate Crimes

Andrew Sullivan makes the cogent point about hate crime legislation:

The real reason for hate crime laws is not the defense of human beings from crime. There are already laws against that - and Matthew Shepard's murderers were successfully prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in a state with no hate crimes law at the time. The real reason for the invention of hate crimes was a hard-left critique of conventional liberal justice and the emergence of special interest groups which need boutique legislation to raise funds for their large staffs and luxurious buildings.

He also quotes another writer pointing out that hate crimes punish motivation, not intent.  Motivation has never been part of the crime, though it sometimes helps prove the crime.  (Note that a motive never has to be proved to make the case for a crime because it's not part of the crime.)  Intent is part of the crime.  So hate crimes add a new element to the crime increasing the punishment.  "Exactly," Sullivan points out.  One of the reasons motivation has never been a part of the crime and punished is because our beliefs and affections are not accessible to the government, who prosecutes the crimes, and probing them as part of the crime is extremely intrusive into individual beliefs.  Government doesn't tell us what to believe or punish us for what we believe because that has always been considered a dangerous slippery slope of government intrusion.  Hate crime legislation introduces a new and unique precedent for government intervention into a sphere American law has always considered off limits.

Hate is wrong, it's immoral - against anyone for any reason.  But our legal system has wisely recognized until now that not all morality should be legislated.  And the affections of citizens, good or evil, is the purview of morality not law.

Greg explains it this way:

Hate crime legislation, then, turns out to be not really about hate, but politics. It's not hatred for the victim that is punished. That's covered under existing statutes. Rather, it's hatred for a protected class--African-Americans, Jews, homosexuals, etc.--that's punished under hate crime laws.

Such legislation makes two crimes out of one. The assault is a crime against the victim. The hate is a crime against the victim's group. Yet how does one make sense of a crime against a group that is a different crime from the one against the victim? Groups have no rights according to the Constitution.

Comments

[Jesse]

>> One of the reasons motivation has never been
>> a part of the crime and punished is because
>> our beliefs and affections are not accessible
>> to the government, who prosecutes the crimes,
>> and probing them as part of the crime is
>> extremely intrusive into individual beliefs.

Tangent: Can God, having full access to our thoughts, rightfully consider motivation/thoughts/beliefs part of a crime?

[Mike Westfall]

He can, and He does.

[Damian]

Another real problem is that it is highly prejudical. In other words the primary way to identify a hate crime is by the race or affiliation of the perpetrator. Is the perpetrator a member of the race or group of the victim? If the answer is no it is likely that a charge of hate will be leveled ironically based on the race or affiliation of the perpetrator. In other words hate will be determined by mere appearances. Also an oddity, if the perpetrator was a member of the victim group and "hate" actually was the motive, it is unlikely he will be prosecuted as such again to due race and or affiliation. The whole thing is nonsense.