More on hate crime legislation

[Briana LeClaire <mmsmom1@yahoo.com>]

I thought the following George Will column excerpt shed some light on
our recent hate crimes discussion.

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(D)oes the competition for special government-conferred status for
particular groups advance the aim of hate crime laws -- a more
tolerant society?

Such laws mandate enhanced penalties for crimes       committed as a
result of, or at least when accompanied by (can juries be counted on
to distinguish causation from correlation?), particular
government-disapproved states of mind. Granted, law has the expressive
function of stigmatizing particular conduct. However, should
government plunge deeper into stigmatizing thoughts and attitudes? The
consequence will be more and more crimes presented by prosecutors as
especially wicked because the defendants had odious (but not illegal)
frames of mind.

Should we saddle juries with the task of detecting an
expanding number of impermissible motives for acts already proscribed?
Should jurors decide:

Is the utterance of a racial or ethnic slur during an assault
conclusive evidence that the assault is a "hate crime," more odious
than the same assault absent the slur? Does a black (white) mugger
presumptively choose his white (black)victim because of his race? Are
rapes invariably hate crimes because rapists pick their victims
because of gender?

Was the 1989 Central Park "wilding" -- the near-fatal rape and beating
of a white jogger by a gang of black and Hispanic youths -- a hate
crime? No, the youths did not suffer enhanced penalties, because they
also assaulted Hispanics that evening. They got more lenient treatment
because of the catholicity of their barbarism.

For the flavor of the future under broad hate crimes laws, consider an
Ohio prosecutor's questions when trying to prove a white man's racist
motive for having a dispute with a black person at a campground. The
prosecutor asked about the white man's relations with his black
neighbor:

"And you lived next door . . . for nine years and you don't even know
her first name? Never had dinner with her?  Never gone out and had a
beer with her? You don't
associate with her, do you? All these black people that you have
described that are your friends, I want you to give me one person,
just one who was really a good friend of yours."

Before passing laws that will make such inquisitorial  questioning
routine in millions of cases involving violent -- and nonviolent --
behavior, consider that, according to the FBI, in 1996 just 12 murders
were classified as hate crimes. And the many thousands of reported
hate incidents include a small fraction of one percent of all crimes.
Most are vandalism (e.g., graffiti) or intimidation (e.g., verbal
abuse).

Now, some motives for seemingly similar deeds are so  much worse than
others that they make some deeds       different not only in degree of
odiousness but in kind: Painting "Beat Michigan" on a bridge is not
quite the same offense as painting "Burn Jews" on a synagogue.

But surely the criminal law can take cognizance of such
distinctions without codifying an ever-more-elaborate
structure of identity politics. And surely Shepard's assailants would
deserve no less severity if he were not gay and their motive had been,
as it may partly have been (how do we disentangle motives?), pure
sadism.

You may write to George Will c/o Washington Post       Writers Group
at 1150 15th Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 



                                                                 
                                                                   
==
:-) Briana



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