Hate Crimes

Post Reply New Topic

I disagree and so do our legal systems. That’s why they have various degrees of murder charges.

Why should someone who intricately plans and carries out a murder get the same punishment as someone who acted in the heat of the moment aaa a crime of passion and killed the person who just raped and murdered their child?

Both are murder, but one ought to be punished harsher than the other IMO - and they are in our legal systems for those reasons.

Yeah that makes sense. But they don't count specific motives like hate. They have whether the murder was premeditated or not in the charge and sentence for example, but they do not count for things like racial or gender issues behind the murder, when it comes to a hate crime.

Should they count those things in the charges?

Last edited by ironpony on 19 Dec 2020, 2:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

They absolutely do take these things into consideration, just not in the terms you're thinking of.

If the prosecutor is any good, things like racial and gender issues are definitely taken into account.

For example: Person A is being tried for murder. Right now there is no proof of premeditation, precluding a first degree murder charge. However, the person they killed was a black man, and Person A's facebook page is filled to the brim with "I hate black men, I want to kill them all" comments, which sets a precedent that Person A had thought about the act of murdering individuals such as the victim in question. Using that, a judge may choose to raise the charge to first degree, since there is evidence creating a reasonable conclusion that Person A did premeditate murder against individuals such as the victim in question.

The problem with the term "hate crime" is that it assumes that "hate" is a necessary component of things - when often times it's really the idea that certain people aren't important, so it's ok to treat them like they're disposable. Sometimes people commit crimes against a specific group of people, not out of hate, but as a result of devaluing that category of individuals, and treating them as such.

I could only imagine that the defendant's lawyer would insist in court that his or her client's Facebook posts on black people is arguing from ignorance.

As far as I know, many prosecutors are reluctant to bring hate crime charges even in obvious circumstances just since satisfying the additional burden of proof counts as some form of diminishing returns.

And the people who fake hate crimes should face the same punishment as someone who is guilty of said hate crime.

Oh okay, but I thought that in a case like this, they are raising the charge based on evidence rather than the hate racial motivation itself, aren't they?

It's not like the have a charge called "murder in the black degree" for example, which would carry a different punishment than other first degree murders.

The point isn't to name the crime after the act, the point is to punish it more severely. It would have been a lower charge, but because of his racially motivated comments, the charge got raised to a worse punishment. The judge also has leeway regarding the specifics of the punishment, and can use their own discretion in the matter. The end result is the same, whether you charge him with "first black degree murder" or just raising the charge from second degree murder to first degree murder. The punishment for first degree murder is (in the US) fairly universally either death penalty, or life w/o parole. Kinda hard to punish someone worse than that (legally).

And yes, they are "just using evidence", but that evidence IS RACIAL BIAS. As opposed to proving premeditation by using non racially motivated evidence, such as evidence that they spent weeks following a person, and were doing internet searches for "how to burgle a house", before they burgled that person's house (no racial motivation). Whereas racially motivated evidence would be a facebook page covered with posts saying "black people don't deserve nice things" and searching "how to burgle", before burgling exclusively black people's houses. The judge has discretion to raise the punishment for the particulars of the crime.

@Deltaville,

It's not that they're "reluctant" to do so, it's that it can be hard to prove, so they don't waste effort going for that angle unless they have compelling evidence at hand. Basic legal 101, you don't make a charge you don't think you can make stick, you go after the charges you have the best chance at getting a conviction for. The only "reluctance" is wasting time on a long shot rather than a sure thing. If they do have compelling evidence, they will usually toss it on top like a cherry on a prosecution sundae.

I'm not sure what angle you're getting at by saying the defense would "insist in court that his or her client's Facebook posts on black people is arguing from ignorance". Could you please explain? I don't see how that's a defense. In this situation, the client made the posts. They exist, and are explicitly clear. What "ignorance" are you proposing is being argued from, and by whom?

It would likely be fallacious to assume that antiblack Facebook posts would automatically suggest that an unrelated 'hate crime' are ignited by a similar bias. Unless that is, the said crime and the postings are chronologically intertwined.

Oh okay, I thought that the pre-meditation was evidence, I never thought of the bias being a part of the charge, just the evidence of the pre-meditation.

In fact, it would not. It is a valid form of circumstantial evidence, commonly used in court proceedings. If you talk about committing a crime a whole lot, and them commit that crime, that counts as premeditation. Circumstantial evidence is admissible in court, so long as it is real and compelling. If you have text messages from someone threatening to key your car, and then your car is suddenly key'd, that is valid circumstantial evidence. Yes, it is possible it was a coincidence, but the EVIDENCE makes that a far less likely conclusion. Even if someone says "I'm going to throw a brick through your front window!" and a rock gets thrown through your car window, that's still an awful close "coincidence", and generally will be taken into consideration.

As such, in my example, if Person A has demonstrated a desire to commit acts of violence against a specific race or gender, and then commits acts of violence against that race or gender, that sets a valid precedent of premeditation. The defense would not simply say "you can't assume that" - because the judge absolutely can assume that, if they find the evidence sufficiently compelling - and most attorneys know not to tell the judge what they can or can't assume. The defense would have to argue WHY it's not a fair assumption - they couldn't just say it isn't one.


@ Ironpony
The bias would be a critical component of the premeditation.

Lets say Person X has an internet history that shows them searching "how to burgle", and making lots of posts that say "black people don't deserve nice things". They then get caught burgling homes mostly owned by black people.

Lets say Person Y has an internet history that shows them searching "how to burgle" and making lots of posts that say "times are hard, so im going to steal stuff". Then they get caught burgling a bunch of random homes.

The judge can absolutely give Person X a harsher punishment than Person Y, even if they both burgled the same number of houses, for the same amount of stolen items. Judges are allowed to do that. The only reason it doesn't happen more often is cos very seldom is the evidence that clear and conveniently compelling. Most people know better than to advertise their crimes, or to broadcast their biases, for exactly this reason.

Oh okay, but I don't think that the law cares about the bias, they only care about the evidence of the premeditation.

If race really was a factor in the charge, then it would listed in the charge itself. But it's not. Only the premidation is mentioned. So it's only the premidation they care about, not the racial bias behind the premidation. I don't think that hate crimes are given harsher sentences though, are they? It seems the premeditation is the decision in a harsher charge, not the hate.

For example, are there any examples of two people charged with first degree murder, where one of those two people, the murder was race motivated, that got a harsher sentence, then the non racially motivated first degree murder? And when the judge passed the harsher sentence, did he actually say on the record in court was because the victim was a different race that the sentence was harsher?

The courts care about bias a lot more than you'd think. If demonstrated bias is a relevant factor to illustrating a feasible circumstance related to the crime (typically but not always a motive), they absolutely care about bias.

Judges have leniency to increase sentences at their own discretion without needing to invent new charges. There doesn't need to be a new and separate charge for "hate" theft vs "normal" theft, the judge just gives a harsher sentence and cites the hate as the reason why. Done deal. Harsher sentence, because of hate, and it's recorded as such, so it IS listed in the charge. Just not in the headline.

Murder is a bad example since murder carries the ultimate (legal) penalty already. So making it a "harsher" sentence is kinda moot. You've already got the worst sentence we can give. Death, or live in prison w/o parole. Kinda hard to (legally) escalate from there. It's more relevant to smaller crimes like theft and assault, that don't automatically carry capital punishment to begin with.

Oh okay. So let's say a con artist decided to con some rich people out of money. If the con artist was a different race than the people, and may have made some racial remarks on facebook in the past, would the judge give the defendant a harsher sentence for the fraud and theft then?

Ironypony surely you didn't realize by now that hate crime charges apply only to white people?

Oh you are saying they only apply to white people, or what are you saying?

I have never heard of a non-white person being charged with a hate crime. It is a categorized offence.