Your "answers" are your opinions on the matter.
Wrong. Some of what I write is my opinion, and some of what I write is fact.
Facts are empirical claims which can be verified or falsified in a manner which does not depend specifically upon the observer in question.
Opinions are predictions, unverified (or unverifiable) statements, or expression of aesthetics/values.
Like I said, the outcome is the SAME. A family and community have been victimized. They don't get over it any easier than anyone else.
Excellent work ignoring both the direct content AND the concepts in my posts.
To me, it is punishing thought
With regards to FACTS, your OPINION doesn't matter. Neither does mine. This is a factual question, and the fact is that the basis of the legal doctrine behind HCE's is recognition of additional harm beyond the direct victim of a criminal act. You can disagree with and argue about whether or not this principle SHOULD or SHOULD NOT be implemented in sentencing, but it IS the principle in use.
You're just saying it in a different way, and I already addressed it above.
No, you already FAILED to understand it several times.
It is making assumptions, nothing more. You cannot punish someone for what others MIGHT do.
Actually, you can. We can argue about whether or not that's good or bad or in between, but OF COURSE it's possible to punish people for what others might do. Anticipation of how a larger community will respond to an action is a routine consideration in crafting and implementing laws...including (especially) criminal sentencing.
You have a bad habit of loosely mixing together feelings and wishes with factual claims. That doesn't work. Whether you or I love it or hate it, it most certainly IS possible (and indeed, rather common) to base policies at least partially upon expectations of how an action will be responded to.
Your last sentence is absolutely ridiculous.
My lest sentence in the reference paragraph was this:
cmakaioz said:
As some other posters have pointed out, the penalties for ACTUALLY killing someone are heavier than for ATTEMPTING to kill them, in part because obviously the harm is greater when you ACTUALLY kill someone.
You find it ridiculous/incomprehensible that people notice the difference in harm between TRYING to kill someone vs. ACTUALLY killing them? REALLY?
Punish people for the CRIME.
Recognition of the consequences/results of a crime...IS punishing for the crime.
We already have levels of crime, manslaughter, second-degree and capital murder. We don't need to muck up the system with more inane laws.
You appear to have a general objection to differences in categories of crime based upon different levels of harm. This would explain your hysterical and repeated misrepresentation of HCE's. HCE's are based upon recognition of additional harm, and since you appear to be opposed to having different (and heavier) categories and sentences of crimes based upon such distinctions, I can see why you oppose HCE's.
HOWEVER...this doesn't change the fact that HCE's are based upon the principle of providing more severe penalties for having committed crimes shown to cause more harm.
How so? If a man has a history of rape, and he rapes and kills a woman. According to your own logic, that is a hate crime.
A man raping and killing a woman has only met one out of the three criteria of a hate crime:
1) commission of a criminal act... CHECK
2) evidentiary demonstration of specific animus against women? --not yet shown
3) evidentiary demonstration by prosecutor that #1 was motivated specifically by #2? -- not yet shown.
He has targeted a specific minority, has a past history of showing his hate towards this group (whether or not it is based upon sexual feelings is irrelevant to the fact that he is targeting a minority).
You really, REALLY don't understand. HCE's are NOT based upon the victim
happening to be part of a protected class. They are based upon demonstration (through evidence) by the prosecutor
that the perpetrator specifically sought to target that victim on that basis.
In English: A mugger could rob Indian immigrants, and only Indian immigrants, and this -- on its own -- would NOT be sufficient to carry an HCE.
The prosecutor must demonstrate specific animus ON THE PART OF THE OFFENDER, and further demonstrate that this animus was the specific motivation for the specific criminal act. The identity of the victim is only relevant insofar as it feeds into the demonstrated animus of the offender. ANYONE can be the victim of a hate crime, because HCE's are based upon demonstrated animus on the part of the offender, NOT whether or not the victim is ACTUALLY what the offender perceives them to be. For example, in (Colorado, I think) a couple years back, there was an assault against a Sikh man by a perpetrator who wanted to terrorize Arabs. The relevant basis (of the HCE which was carried against the offender) was that the OFFENDER was trying to target Arabs, and (falsely) believed the Sikh man to be an Arab.
Get it yet? It's about the animus of the
offender, not the real or imagined identity of the victim.
No, children are considered individuals and human-beings of their own right, not an extension of their parents. Children do not have political rights because they are generally incapable of such things.
I was describing the legal and political reality, not advocating for or against that situation. You yourself acknowledge that children do not have political rights, which corroborates my argument that the reason we don't have AGE as a protected class is because children -- as a political block -- have no direct power of their own; they must have their interests fought for through allies.
Murders and killings affect every community that they occur in; it doesn't matter what the race, gender or age of the victim was.
Strawman. No one here has claimed that murders and killings ONLY affect certain people. Rather, I pointed out the fact that TARGETED crimes do NOT affect all people equally. Do you comprehend the difference between those statements?
Why? Why not just prosecute them to the full extent of the law without mucking up the system with all of this? I will agree that if someone has a police record of targeting a specific minority group and then kills a group of them, you MAY be able to prosecute for a hate crime,
You still don't get it. Demonstrating specific animus and a criminal act is not sufficient. For an HCE to be carried, the prosecutor must show -- through evidence, not supposition -- that the crime in question was motivated by that animus. "Officer Joe killed a black guy" and "Officer Joe always said he hated black guys" is NOT enough. The burden of proof for an HCE in such a case would be for the prosecutor to demonstrate that Officer Joe Killed That Specific Black Guy BECAUSE Joe Hated Black Guys.
but to me, that is still making assumptions about what somebody was thinking about at the time of the murder, and that could NOT be proven.
You are wrong. FACTUALLY wrong. HCE's are not based upon assumption, but upon EVIDENCE. HCEs are rarely pursued precisely because the evidentiary burden is so difficult.
You can assume that because of his history, but that is all. It is still only an assumption.
I (and you) can assume things until we die, but those assumptions don't carry any weight in a courtroom. No, in a courtroom, a prosecutor must demonstrate through EVIDENCE, NOT SUPPOSITION that a crime was specifically motivated by animus against a protected class, AND must link that animus to the specific crime in question.
You could have a defendant who actively published homophobic bigotry on websites and radio and in print for his entire adult life...but until and unless the prosecutor successfully shows through evidence that this animus was specifically linked to an already-recognized (convicted) criminal act, that history doesn't mean anything for the purpose of sentencing.
And this is what YOU say. You are doing the same thing on the opposite end of the spectrum
WRONG. YOU are mistaking matters of fact for matters of opinion. The legal doctrine upon which HCE's are based is NOT a matter of opinion. It has a clear and documented history, rose out of a specific chain of historical events and political movements, and this basis is reflected in the strategies of legal counsel in actual court cases. Once again: we can argue all we like about whether or not this SHOULD be the basis of sentencing enhancements, but as things stand, right now, it is a FACT that this IS the basis of HCE's.
Here's a parallel example:
The speed limit on my local highway is 60 MPH. (FACT)
I think it should be higher (OPINION)
My brother thinks it should be lower (OPINION)
BUT...no matter what I or my brother feels about it, the speed limit is 60 MPH (FACT)
, but you have the advantage that there is ALREADY existing hate crime legislation, which makes it EASY for you to say I'm incorrect.
It's not easy or hard, it simply IS. There IS hate crime legislation, and it is based upon a legal doctrine of recognizing additional harm with more severe penalty. That's the way it is NO MATTER HOW EITHER OF US MAY RESPOND TO IT.
Facts are not subject to disagreement...one either accepts them or denies them...but they don't change at all based upon our feelings.
I think this set of laws is incorrect, unless there extreme and extenuating circumstances. That means that convictions for hate crimes are pretty low, and they are very low. Why is that? Because you cannot prove what someone is thinking at the time they committed their crime.
Wrong. The rate of successful carriage of hate crime ENHANCEMENTS (HCE's are not criminal charges on their own...they are add-on's to existing convictions) is low precisely because HCE's require a substantial evidentiary burden. It is EASY to defeat an HCE because the perpetrator practically has to directly admit to it in order to carry the HCE. That's why they are typically only carried against long-term / "career" bigots (folks who openly admit their animus because they don't see anything wrong with it).
Our laws are NOT supposed to look into other things this particular criminal has done in his past, because he is on trial for the current crime. Don't you see how this is a slippery slope?
COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT TO THE FACT. Any and all notions about what "our" laws SHOULD or SHOULD NOT do have absolutely no bearing on the fact that HCE's are based upon recognition of additional harm. What laws SHOULD and SHOULDN'T be doing is an entirely separate discussion.
What if somebody assaulted a minority in the past, but it had nothing to do with racial motivations. Then, years later, this same person gets into a bar room brawl with a person who just happens to be of the same minority group, is the evidence to convict someone of a "hate" crime?
NO. For the upteenth time: HCE's are difficult to pursue in a conviction precisely because the prosecutor must show with EVIDENCE, NOT SUPPOSITION that the crime was committed SPECIFICALLY based upon animus against a protected class:
animus alone? not enough
commission of a crime? not enough
commission of a crime by someone who has previously been shown to bear a specific animus? STILL NOT ENOUGH
Commision of a crime, by someone shown to bear a specific animus against a protected class, AND who is ALSO shown to have committed the crime BASED UPON that animus?
THEN, AND ONLY THEN does the HCE have a fighting chance of being carried to the sentence.
