that is not strictly true. Several murders lack any kind of emotional motivation. Killing soneone for money is the first things that comes to mind.

That's debatable. I like money but I don't hate people enough to be willing to kill them for it.

I don't see why you would need to hate someone to kill them, simply your love for money would have to overcome your respect for the life of another human being while your feelings towards that individual could be completely neutral or nonexistant.

But true ennough, this is all debatable and difficult to view objectively.

It's actually kind of cute to see you all get in such a tizzy about things. It really is. All the hand wringing and proclamations of doom.

To understand what hate crimes legislation is about, you first have to understand the idea of mens rea, or "guilty mind". Mens rea considers the mindset of the person commiting the actus reus, or the actual act. Our legal system has done this forever, so quit whining about the downfall of American society.

Take a concrete example. Situation 1: A husband suffocates his wife with a pillow while she slept in order to collect insurance money. Situation 2: A husband suffocates his wife with a pillow while she slept out of mercy to end her life because she was dying of cancer. Which one is more guilty? Which one deserves the harsher sentance?

Which is worse? A tagger's name spraypainted on a bus stop or swastikas on a synagogue wall? Which one does more to disrupt society as a whole?

The law doesn't make it any more of a crime to mug a black person, a gay person or a muslim than it does to rob a white male. What it does do is make it more of a crime to mug a black person, a gay person or a muslim BECAUSE they're black, gay or muslim. The mens rea in that case is different and therefore deserves a different sentancing.

Look at the FBI's hate crime statistics for 07: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2007/table_05.htm

You'll see "anti-white" listed as a hate crime category. Shocking, right? It's because hate crime legislation is designed to give everyone equal protection under the law, as everyone has a race, creed, color, etc. You're all hung up on the idea that this kind of law establishes protected classes. It doesn't. It's about taking into account MOTIVES, not protecting classes.

Who are you talking to, and is this type of comment really necessary?

Semantics. The main crime is the murder or the mugging etc. That's what the criminal should be tried for. Hate crime legislation is just a feel good sideshow that has enormous potential for abuse.

I second this.

A feel good sideshow? Hate crimes go further than an attack on a single victim. They're an attack on a community, be it racial or religious, or what have you and do damage to the overall community as a whole. Look at Jasper, TX.

Hate crimes are by definition a worse form of crime than the underlying actus reus and should be treated as such.

Hate is worse than murder? Sorry, I disagree.

Not at all what I said. A murder motivated by hatred towards a humanistic trait is worse than a murder at random.

Hate + Murder is worse than either hate or murder.

I still disagree. It is the murder itself that is significant, not the reason(S) for committing it. I might be willing to consider mitigating circumstances like in the assisted suicide example you posted as meriting a lesser punishment but guilty of murder is guilty of murder and nothing should be allowed to cloud that.

I agree - murder is murder. But it doesn't sound like they're talking about murder. The word I saw was "attack". Murder committed during a robbery is still murder, as is murdering someone because they are a fill-in-the-blank. But there is a difference in holding up someone on the street and beating a person half to death because you don't like his fill-in-the-blank.

I'm not sure what I think of this at the moment, but attacks on people done simply because they are your "wrong" kind of people may well be worth special punishment.

Another thing about this that bugs me is the shear subjectivity of it. Any crime can be cast as a hate crime if the perpetrators and victims happen to be from different races, religions, cultures, creeds, genders or any other, as mookie puts it, "humanistic" difference.

I just hate this piling on of charges. A crime like assault or murder for some reason is no longer worthy of prosecution on it's own, it must be buttressed by an entire host of secondary charges.

There's the crime itself, the conspiracy to commit the crime, the conspiracy to commit conspiracy, the location of the crime, who the victim was, where the perp came from and now the motive itself becomes a crime as well?

It's just fodder for lawyers. It does nothing to deter crime or provide justice for its victims.

Why?
If someone breaks into your house should he only be charged with burglary even if he broke other laws too .
How about if someone steals a wallet and also uses the cards in it fraudulently , should he just be charged with the theft or the fraud or should he be charged with both?
The thing I hate with "piling on of charges" is when they make the sentences concurrent instead of consecutive .

If somebody mugs me because they hate white people, I think that's worse than them mugging me because they want my money. That doesn't mean that mugging me to steal my money isn't bad. Somebody who does that deserves to be prosecuted and punished. But I'm less scared of them than the person who mugs me because they hate me for who I am.

Hatred is a lot more damaging to our society and difficult to cure than the other things that motivate crimes.

Wait till the nexus gets ahold of that post ! :rock:

It's the way all things get done now. Get a traffic ticket and you pay the fine plus a whole list of other fees for the honor of being processed.

Buddahaid

Could use a job:yep:

:gulp:


Buddahaid

This is the point exactly. The punishment needs to proportionally fit the damage that the crime does to the community as a whole.

Deterrence is not really the main thrust of a law. If you wanted to go down that road you could say that statutes against murder of theft don't do anything to deter murderers of thieves, so why have them?

A law expresses something that we as a people see as unacceptable due to the harm it does to our society. And when you look at the motivation for someone committing a hate crime, I bet they'd say something along the lines of they were defending their community or their identity or taking a stand against some kind of foreign unwelcome invading force. That's why we as a people need to take that away from people who would do these things and say "no, you don't speak for us and we don't condone that." And the way to do that in a legal sense is through hate crime legislation.