Are "Enhanced" penalties for hate crimes unconstitutional?

[Critter7r]

Why is it more important that a minority is assaulted or killed than anyone else that isn't of a minority persuasion?

I mean, it must be more important when a black man is killed by a white man than when a white man is killed by another white man, or a black man is killed by another black man because the penalties are worse, right?

As a straight white American male, I want the same protections under the law as blacks, gays and other minorities.

I'm totally playing tongue-in-cheek devil's advocate here, but I do feel that "enhanced" penalties seem to offer more protection under the law to those groups than to those that are not members of those groups.

 

[Captain Adverse]

Why is it more important that a minority is assaulted or killed than anyone else that isn't of a minority persuasion?

I mean, it must be more important when a black man is killed by a white man than when a white man is killed by another white man, or a black man is killed by another black man because the penalties are worse, right?

As a straight white American male, I want the same protections under the law as blacks, gays and other minorities.

I'm totally playing tongue-in-cheek devil's advocate here, but I do feel that "enhanced" penalties seem to offer more protection under the law to those groups than to those that are not members of those groups.

I doubt it is unconstitutional, or that SCOTUS would rule it to be.

I do disagree with "enhanced" crime because no person should be held more special than any other in the eyes of the law.

 

[Chagos]

Beats me and always has.

 

[OrphanSlug]

Why is it more important that a minority is assaulted or killed than anyone else that isn't of a minority persuasion?

I mean, it must be more important when a black man is killed by a white man than when a white man is killed by another white man, or a black man is killed by another black man because the penalties are worse, right?

As a straight white American male, I want the same protections under the law as blacks, gays and other minorities.

I'm totally playing tongue-in-cheek devil's advocate here, but I do feel that "enhanced" penalties seem to offer more protection under the law to those groups than to those that are not members of those groups.

Because it solved a political problem, which is often devoid of social reality.

I've never bought into the idea of "hate crime," with good reasons. Without it suggest murder without value or reason or motivation. Murder is murder, when we set additional guidelines to suggest murder is based on politically defined "hatred" we add inequality to the law and continue to remove reason from enforcement. "Enhanced penalties" offer no new protections for those it is aimed to protect.

And it is all a complete farce anyway For example, over 90% of blacks murdered are committed by other blacks. You really think the other 10% were more protected because of "hate" legislation? Contrary to popular belief, blacks have more to worry about from other blacks long before whites, or the police, or some other demographic. If "black lives matter," then why do we only hear about those lives matter when someone outside the demographic does the killing? More over, what did "hate crime" really do to impact this?

Hate crime then has nothing to do with protection, and everything to do with perception of "doing something" for the black community. Blacks, other racial minorities, sexual orientation minorities, etc. do not need additional criminal punishments, add on charges, and these false sense of legal protections. We demand all the time for equality under the law, we need to abandon the idea of using racial status or some other minority status as qualifiers for additional law that serve no realistic impact to crime or punishment in any sense.

Overall our national "violent" crime rates are in decline (have been for a long time,) but "hate crime" reporting is on the incline. Worse, the FBI claims few are reported but the terrible point here is even less are actually prosecuted. You have no choice but to conclude that "hate crime" legislation intentions have served *zero* social purpose. But to politics on the other hand, a field day of claimed reasoning all devoid of statistical proof.

 

[SocialDemocrat]

Hate crime legislation is a bad idea. Attempting to punish a criminal more or less harshly based on whether or not they were being hateful opens up a can of worms that crimes can be punished based on motive for said crime, which would be nearly impossible to enforce.

 

[CrabCake]

Why is it more important that a minority is assaulted or killed than anyone else that isn't of a minority persuasion?

That's not what hate crime laws address.

I mean, it must be more important when a black man is killed by a white man than when a white man is killed by another white man, or a black man is killed by another black man because the penalties are worse, right?

The penalties aren't worse, they are exactly the same*

*they are exactly the same in theory. In practice minorities tend to be sentenced to about 20% more time than whites for the exact same crime.

As a straight white American male, I want the same protections under the law as blacks, gays and other minorities.

You have them.

I'm totally playing tongue-in-cheek devil's advocate here, but I do feel that "enhanced" penalties seem to offer more protection under the law to those groups than to those that are not members of those groups.

They don't.

I agree with SocialDemocrat on this one. I think these laws are a bad idea because they put juries in an incredibly difficult position. Rather than having to decide on facts about what occurred, juries are forced to become mind readers...trying to divine the intentions behind the crime. It also steers a bit close to the concept of "thought crime", punishing someone for what they think (in this case for what they thought while committing a crime). It's a bad idea, but not for the reasons you proposed. It doesn't give any more rights to any race*. If a white man was killed by a minority who was targeting them because of the fact they are white, then that would be considered a hate crime under most of these laws; non-minorities get the same amount of protection.

*Of course all hate crime laws are different and some might be particularly bad in that they do limit it to only certain races. I don't know if such a law exists, but it might. In general though, hate crime laws don't specify that they apply only to minorities, they apply to anyone who is targeted because of their race/ethnicity, whether that be white, black, hispanic, asian, arab...whatever. They all have the same level of protection.

Hate crime laws aren't unconstitutional. They are just poorly thought out and misguided in most cases.

 

[EMNofSeattle]

Hate crime legislation is a bad idea. Attempting to punish a criminal more or less harshly based on whether or not they were being hateful opens up a can of worms that crimes can be punished based on motive for said crime, which would be nearly impossible to enforce.

But we already do that, if a guy comes home and finds his wife in bad with another man and kills them in a for of rage, in some states they'll be likely to get a sentence that allows them parole, if a guy in a dispute over money hires the mob to off his wife that's a death penalty crime.

On the other end of the scale, writing a bad check under the mistaken belief you had enough money is not a crime, writing a bad check to defraud someone is a crime, clearly your intent is the here
Motivations do matter in sentencing.

How about this, if a group of youths is vandalizing cars as hijinks, should that be the same crime as targeting cars owned by black families to drive "them" out of the neighborhood ?

 

[SocialDemocrat]

But we already do that, if a guy comes home and finds his wife in bad with another man and kills them in a for of rage, in some states they'll be likely to get a sentence that allows them parole, if a guy in a dispute over money hires the mob to off his wife that's a death penalty crime.

The larger issue there is that the man hired someone to kill his wife as opposed to doing it personally.

On the other end of the scale, writing a bad check under the mistaken belief you had enough money is not a crime, writing a bad check to defraud someone is a crime, clearly your intent is the here
Motivations do matter in sentencing.

That's whether or not someone intended to commit a crime; determining why someone chose to commit a crime complicates sentencing further than just whether or not someone intended to commit a crime in the first place. A more appropriate would be trying to determine whether or not someone wrote a bad check because they were in a tough financial situation or if they wrote it out of malice to the recipient.

How about this, if a group of youths is vandalizing cars as hijinks, should that be the same crime as targeting cars owned by black families to drive "them" out of the neighborhood ?

If all that can be accurately determined from said hypothetical case is that the group vandalized a car belonging to a black family, trying to determine why they did it could devolve into debating the defendants' feelings about race outside of the incident. While one of these crimes is obviously more morally wrong than the other, it's not it all practical to ask the justice system to account for that.

 

[Paschendale]

It's not about treating the victim as special. It's about the fact that a hate crime is more than just one person attacking another. It also includes using the power of society and your privilege as part of whatever group you're in to stomp down another group that doesn't have that privilege. It is the action, not the victim, that is treated differently, because the action is really more than the equivalent action in different circumstances. This is not, of course, to say that any instance of a white person attacking a minority is a hate crime, nor is every attack by a man against a woman, nor a heterosexual against a homosexual. But when the victim's identity is the impetus of the crime, or rather when the perpetrator's biases and ideas about that identity are the impetus, that's more than a simple assault.

 

[Mycroft]

It's not about treating the victim as special. It's about the fact that a hate crime is more than just one person attacking another. It also includes using the power of society and your privilege as part of whatever group you're in to stomp down another group that doesn't have that privilege. It is the action, not the victim, that is treated differently, because the action is really more than the equivalent action in different circumstances. This is not, of course, to say that any instance of a white person attacking a minority is a hate crime, nor is every attack by a man against a woman, nor a heterosexual against a homosexual. But when the victim's identity is the impetus of the crime, or rather when the perpetrator's biases and ideas about that identity are the impetus, that's more than a simple assault.

Who says a hate crime is more than just one person attacking another?

In any case, I don't agree with considering a crime worse just because of hate as opposed to any other reason. If I assault someone...it's assault. It shouldn't matter if I assaulted him because I simply enjoyed beating up people or if I assaulted him because I hated him. If I murder someone, it's murder. The murder isn't somehow worse because I hated the person...he's still dead and I did it.

In my opinion, making crimes worse because of some kind of hate only serves to perpetuate the biases that caused the hate. Just punish the crime and punish it severely whether it was motivated by hate or some other reason. That should be enough.

 

[Critter7r]

That's not what hate crime laws address.

you're right, I took the easy route explaining this as a white person being punished more severely for killing a minority just because he's a member of the KKK instead of also trying to pursue the nuances of a minority being punished more severely for killing a KKK member just because they hate KKK members.

The penalties aren't worse, they are exactly the same*

*they are exactly the same in theory. In practice minorities tend to be sentenced to about 20% more time than whites for the exact same crime.

Again, you're probably right. But I'd think that non-minorities would tend to be the ones getting sentenced more often specifically under the enhanced penalties of hate crimes.

They don't.

I agree with SocialDemocrat on this one. I think these laws are a bad idea because they put juries in an incredibly difficult position. Rather than having to decide on facts about what occurred, juries are forced to become mind readers...trying to divine the intentions behind the crime. It also steers a bit close to the concept of "thought crime", punishing someone for what they think (in this case for what they thought while committing a crime). It's a bad idea, but not for the reasons you proposed. It doesn't give any more rights to any race*. If a white man was killed by a minority who was targeting them because of the fact they are white, then that would be considered a hate crime under most of these laws; non-minorities get the same amount of protection.

*Of course all hate crime laws are different and some might be particularly bad in that they do limit it to only certain races. I don't know if such a law exists, but it might. In general though, hate crime laws don't specify that they apply only to minorities, they apply to anyone who is targeted because of their race/ethnicity, whether that be white, black, hispanic, asian, arab...whatever. They all have the same level of protection.

Hate crime laws aren't unconstitutional. They are just poorly thought out and misguided in most cases.

This was more my point. Now I wish I had worded it differently. But "Is punishing someone more severely for killing someone out of hate for their race/gender/sexual orientation as opposed to killing them just for fun unconstitutional" probably wouldn't have fit in the Thread Title line anyhow.

I seriously doubt that a single homophobe that has been about to assault a gay person at a Pride rally has stopped short when they thought about the increased penalty they would endure because they knew that everyone was aware of their hatred for gays.

 

[Paschendale]

Who says a hate crime is more than just one person attacking another?

Because that would be the very definition of a hate crime. It is a hate crime when there is more going on than simple assault.

 

[Skeptic Bob]

First of all, hate crimes aren't just committed by white people against minorities. According to the FBI only 52.4% of those accused of committing a hate crime were white. 24.3% were black. So the government does recognize hate crimes committed by minorities.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2013/topic-pages/offenders/offenders_final

When it comes to attacking PEOPLE I don't think there should be any distinction. If you beatsomeone up because you don't like their race or you beat them up because you just feel like beating someone up you should get the same penalty.

That said, when it comes to vandalizing property I do think there is a difference between, say, spray painting an innocuous symbol on a church door and spray painting "nigger" on a church door. Both are crimes bu the negative impact of one is definitely greater than the other. So I can actually see the utility of distinguishing between hate crimes when the crime is nonviolent in nature. I haven't put too much thought into so someone might come along and shoot all osrts of holes through my reasoning.

 

[celticwar17]

First of all, hate crimes aren't just committed by white people against minorities. According to the FBI only 52.4% of those accused of committing a hate crime were white. 24.3% were black. So the government does recognize hate crimes committed by minorities.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2013/topic-pages/offenders/offenders_final

When it comes to attacking PEOPLE I don't think there should be any distinction. If you beatsomeone up because you don't like their race or you beat them up because you just feel like beating someone up you should get the same penalty.

That said, when it comes to vandalizing property I do think there is a difference between, say, spray painting an innocuous symbol on a church door and spray painting "nigger" on a church door. Both are crimes bu the negative impact of one is definitely greater than the other. So I can actually see the utility of distinguishing between hate crimes when the crime is nonviolent in nature. I haven't put too much thought into so someone might come along and shoot all osrts of holes through my reasoning.

I think it's thought through well, but then again aren't you assuming certain nonviolent crimes impact certain people more than others? How much you get offended is completely subjective. What you find offensive is completely subjective.

 

[Ikari]

Why is it more important that a minority is assaulted or killed than anyone else that isn't of a minority persuasion?

I mean, it must be more important when a black man is killed by a white man than when a white man is killed by another white man, or a black man is killed by another black man because the penalties are worse, right?

As a straight white American male, I want the same protections under the law as blacks, gays and other minorities.

I'm totally playing tongue-in-cheek devil's advocate here, but I do feel that "enhanced" penalties seem to offer more protection under the law to those groups than to those that are not members of those groups.

I don't know if they are "unconstitutional" or not, but I don't agree with them. The crime is the crime, that's it. Hate crime legislation is just about government force and the expansion of our prison and punishment system. Nothing more.

 

[Peter Grimm]

Why is it more important that a minority is assaulted or killed than anyone else that isn't of a minority persuasion?

I mean, it must be more important when a black man is killed by a white man than when a white man is killed by another white man, or a black man is killed by another black man because the penalties are worse, right?

As a straight white American male, I want the same protections under the law as blacks, gays and other minorities.

I'm totally playing tongue-in-cheek devil's advocate here, but I do feel that "enhanced" penalties seem to offer more protection under the law to those groups than to those that are not members of those groups.

I'm pretty sure we can use the 14th amendment to justify this either way. The 14th is the Swiss Army Knife of constitutional amendments... it gives the Supreme Court carte blanche to legislate whatever they want from their pulpit.

God Bless America

 

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Why is it more important that a minority is assaulted or killed than anyone else that isn't of a minority persuasion?

I mean, it must be more important when a black man is killed by a white man than when a white man is killed by another white man, or a black man is killed by another black man because the penalties are worse, right?

As a straight white American male, I want the same protections under the law as blacks, gays and other minorities.

I'm totally playing tongue-in-cheek devil's advocate here, but I do feel that "enhanced" penalties seem to offer more protection under the law to those groups than to those that are not members of those groups.

It isn't. What important is their liklihood of doing it again.

That's why we have different sentencing for all the different kinds of homicide: crimes of passion, assassination, premeditated murder, etc. A bigotry-motived killing is just another category.

And for your information, hate crimes against whites are prosecuted as well. I don't know why you think this only applies to blacks. I also don't know why you don't seem to mind that different kinds of homicide get different sentencing, but for some reason it bugs you that crimes do too.

 

[Skeptic Bob]

I think it's thought through well, but then again aren't you assuming certain nonviolent crimes impact certain people more than others? How much you get offended is completely subjective. What you find offensive is completely subjective.

That is of course true. Subjectivity is always going to play a part when we get into the gray areas. I guess that is what DAs get the big bucks for.

 

[Critter7r]

It isn't. What important is their liklihood of doing it again.

That's why we have different sentencing for all the different kinds of homicide: crimes of passion, assassination, premeditated murder, etc. A bigotry-motived killing is just another category.

And for your information, hate crimes against whites are prosecuted as well. I don't know why you think this only applies to blacks. I also don't know why you don't seem to mind that different kinds of homicide get different sentencing, but for some reason it bugs you that crimes do too.

Not sure where you're going with that last paragraph ... I already conceded that I simplified the OP for the sake of ... simplicity, and just fired off the obvious, stereotypical hate crime against minorities.

And I mentioned both homicide and assault and other crimes so I don't have any idea what you mean by that last sentence.

Unless you meant to say that since there are different levels of comitting the same crime (murder 1,2 & 3 are all still 'murder' ... 1st degree rape and 2nd degree are all still 'rape', etc), that it shouldn't be surprising that there are different levels of punishment for the same crime.

 

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Not sure where you're going with that last paragraph ... I already conceded that I simplified the OP for the sake of ... simplicity, and just fired off the obvious, stereotypical hate crime against minorities.

And I mentioned both homicide and assault and other crimes so I don't have any idea what you mean by that last sentence.

Unless you meant to say that since there are different levels of comitting the same crime (murder 1,2 & 3 are all still 'murder' ... 1st degree rape and 2nd degree are all still 'rape', etc), that it shouldn't be surprising that there are different levels of punishment for the same crime.

Yes, precisely. There are many different sentences you can get for killing a person, and the severity of your sentence depends on how likely the justice system thinks you are to be a future risk to others. Someone who kills someone as a hate crime would be deemed more of a future risk than some types of other motives for killings, thus their sentence would be more severe than some.

In general, ideological and pathological killings receive greater sentences. Under that umbrella is not just hate crimes, but also psychopathic premeditated murders, cult killings, etc. They are deemed to be very high risk people, because they killed people coldly and in a calculated, "logical" sort of way. It might be possible to fix someone who committed a serious crime of passion or as part of "street life," but fixing someone who believes they were right and perhaps should kill even more people is far more difficult, if not impossible.

 

[Critter7r]

All good points.

 

[RAMOSS]

Beats me and always has.

Depending why you got beat, that might be a hate crime.

 

[Chagos]

Depending why you got beat, that might be a hate crime.

:mrgreen:

 

[Critter7r]

OK, so thanks to S&M's (hubbahubba) last post, I can see that since the protections aren't afforded only to minorities, but are increased punishments for a crime, based on intent (just like the differing charges of Murder 1,2 & 3 are based on intent), that the enhanced penalties aren't unconstitutional.

So next time I'm at a party and someone says that enhanced penalties are only more protection for minorities, I can offer another viewpoint.

 

[Gaius46]

It's not about treating the victim as special. It's about the fact that a hate crime is more than just one person attacking another. It also includes using the power of society and your privilege as part of whatever group you're in to stomp down another group that doesn't have that privilege. It is the action, not the victim, that is treated differently, because the action is really more than the equivalent action in different circumstances. This is not, of course, to say that any instance of a white person attacking a minority is a hate crime, nor is every attack by a man against a woman, nor a heterosexual against a homosexual. But when the victim's identity is the impetus of the crime, or rather when the perpetrator's biases and ideas about that identity are the impetus, that's more than a simple assault.

So it's not about motivation it's about place in society? An underprivileged person cannot be guilty of a hate crime even if he professes profound hatred of the privileged as a class? Or more concretely a white person can be guilty of a hate crime but a black person can never be guilty of a crime?