Or it was the fact that they were white.
I'll even consider that the fact that they were white led the perps to believe they might have more to steal. So while they may not have acted purely out of racial hatred, the victims' race would still be a factor.
And if they were just after the victims' vehicle, why the kidnapping, rape, torture and mutilation?
And that's exactly one of the reasons I think 'hate crime' prosecutions are such a farce when we ask juries to make such a determination.
If it's wrong when we now ask juries to base their verdicts on considerations they have no way of empirically establishing the validity of beyond a reasonable doubt when the perps are white, it's just as wrong when we demand the same charges be presented to the jury when the races are reversed, isn't it?
Or do we conservatives now wish to thow up our hands & legitimize the outrageously unjust politicization of criminal procedings which 'hate crime' prosecutions indisputably are when they ask juries to return verdicts based not on concrete evidence but on raw, kneejerk tribal emotion.
All I'm asking folks here to consider is that if you're now willing to confer legitimacy upon that charge's use here, whether you like it or not, you're in effect willing to confer legitimacy upon its use everywhere else in every other case, and you're saying it's okay for juries everywhere to adjudicate guilt based not on evidence before them, but on what they "think" the perpetrators were probably thinking when they committed the crime, just as some on this thread have suggested they believe they "know" for a fact what those animals' underlying motivations were when we have no way of knowing any such thing!
Do we really want to allow juries to continue enjoying the power to do that? Is that wise?