Your lefty friend sounds pretty dumb, and in fact he's wrong.
But there *is* such a thing as a hate crime, and it *is* more significant than other types. Not flaming massively send-in-the-Guard more, but more.
A hate crime is not only an action against an individual but against a group of people (it does not have to be a minority.) It has as its purpose not only the actual crime part but a chilling or threatening effect against a lot of people. It's that public threat which adds significance.
There aren't special classes of victims, no. But that's a red herring. There are special classes of perpetrators.
welcome to FR.........
All violent crimes have a chilling or threatening effect against a lot of people.
Welcome to FR.
Hope you enjoy your stay.
Sorry. Load of crap. What you are affirming is that someone should receive extra punishment for their thoughts. Or what other people believe are the perps thoughts. And that's crap.
Your just claiming that motive matters. And that is not a concept to be immediately dismissed. Motive has ALWAYS mattered in criminal cases, both as to the crime charged and the sentence imposed.
If I cause the death of someone, my motive for doing so can be the difference between a murder-1 death penalty, and a negligent homocide probation.
But "hate crime" legislation as enacted is not simply determining a "motive" in the sense of whether you intended harm. It is instead imputing a motive based on the minority status of the victim, and judging motive not based on intention, but purpose.
In my previous example, while "motive" meaning "what did you intend" made the difference, "motive" meaning WHY you did it made no difference in itself. If I were to kill someone because I wanted their money, it wouldn't be any different than if I were to kill someone because they wouldn't go on a date with me.
If your goal is to prevent intimidation, you should pass a law making "intimidation" a crime, separately chargeable. Then if someone commits a murder or arson, and you can prove the purpose was to deprive OTHER people of their rights through intimidation, you could get a separate conviction, rather than simply making the SAME act count as different crimes simply because of the minority status of the victim.
I don't endorse "intimidation" laws either, but at least they would be honest (might be unconstitutional, but would be honest).
Then in scenario #2, the same man is killed just because he has money, and the killer could care less about human life, he just kills and steals money.
Do we give the killer in scenario #1, who has no regard for blacks, a harsher sentence than the killer in #2 who has no regard for any life?
What worries me most is the concept of thought crimes, as is now playing out in England. If you so much as express an opinion against a protected minority, you are going to jail. However if you are a member of a protected minority, you can threaten everyone else with death, and mean it, and the police will protect you.
What a load of BS! This is nothing more than sophistry, impossible of proving and intended to provide a touchy feely excuse to impose thought crime. You could apply this rational to any crime. Crime committed by minority street gangs is just as intimidating to people outside the minority as so called "hate crimes" are, as are a million other examples. If a criminal tells a fat guy to "get against the wall fatass" - is that a hate crime against overweight people? If the criminal calls a woman victim a b*tch is it a hate crime against women? Hash epitaphs made by criminals are generally to insult and intimidate the immediate victim, whether bigoted or just vulgar. There is no way one can extrapolate an intent just from a racial epitath uttered during a crime.
The bottom line is that the whole concept of hate crimes stands for the proposition that some victims are more important than others.
Probably just some Katrina refugees trying to keep warm.They're entitled you know.
I must disagree. If anything, those that would commit "hate crimes" (crime motivated by some particular status of the victim) are easier to deal with. Once you identify who they are after, then you can narrow down your suspect list by eliminating a large portion of the population.
And as far as being "more significant" to the victim, If a person identifies themselves as needing "special status" because of what they believe/who they sleep with/their skin color, well they are already victims every day of their life; victims of the left. They are the victims of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, victims of Mullah's and Rabbi's, victims of Hillary Clinton and Barbara Boxer, victims of anyone who tells them that they can't live the life that they dream of because some ethereal "man" is keeping them down. But mostly they are just victims of themselves, because they don't have the strength of will, clarity of thought, and sense of purpose to just live their lives, and to do what it takes to make of that life what they want.
Jacoby's closing paragraph sums it up nicely. "But real progress will come only when we abandon the whole misguided notion of "hate crimes," which deems certain crimes more deserving of outrage and punishment not because of what the criminal did, but because of the group to which the victim belonged."
It is a special Federal category created so the Feds can get involved in criminal law enforcement. Some States have also created this category within their own jurisdiction because they do not understand its origin.
But there *is* such a thing as a hate crime, and it *is* more significant than other types. Not flaming massively send-in-the-Guard more, but more.
So...a man who kills his neighbor because he's a Jew is worse than a man who kills his neighbor because said neighbor's dog crapped on his lawn, or worse than a man who killed his wife because hse was a nag or because he wanted her life insurance payout?
Sorry, not buying.