As republicmouse' article said, "but the state does specify harsher penalties for bias crimes". Adding a few years to a death penalty sentence is, well..., a silly concept, so stop suggesting it, OK? 
There is no harsher penalty than death (though some say that life without parole might be), so stop being a knucklehead, I mean it.
There's nothing "superfluous" about adding in a penalty.
If the jurors are stuck on whether to give them death or not, the addition might very well push them towards the death penalty they might not have chosen otherwise.
Now you're just being plain obtuse. To the contrary, unnecessarily bringing up irrelevant issues such as the race / hate crime question can open the prosecution up to errors that might cause an otherwise solid verdict to be successfully appealed.
Looks like the DA has a solid death penalty case here - why not allow her to try it without the attendant irrelevancies, and we'll all rejoice at a guilty verdict, OK?
Lets face it this poor excuse for a prosecutor didn't do her job and now these thugs may get to live out their whole lives at taxpayer expense because of it.
Whoever first said "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt" was thinking of you.....