I'm always a little leery of 'hate' crimes

[ex-khobar Andy]

There was an awful episode yesterday of a Muslim family killed in Canada. A man (allegedly 20 years old, if they've got the right guy) drove into them as they waited at the side of the road and killed four of five of them.

It is being described as a 'hate crime.' I don't know the Canadian or Ontario law on the subject, but I assume it is similar to the US. (I don't know the US law either, but I've seen how it has been used once or twice.) Why should it matter if the motivation was racist hatred? I understand that the motivation may be important from the point of view of the investigation - were others involved, what can we do to minimize future episodes of this type and so on.

There was the attack a few months ago on (mostly) Asian women in massage businesses in Georgia. The perpetrator killed 8 women. Did he kill them because they were women, because they were (mostly) Asian, because he perceived them as somehow part of or associated with the sex trade, or for some other reason like wrong place, wrong time? Murder is an absolute crime and there are provisions in the law for reasons which might be exculpatory - mental illness, self defense, and so on. To make the crime in some way 'worse' if it is driven by some sort of racism connotes that it is somehow 'better' if it isn't.

[Sue U]

Mental state and motivation of the perpetrator has long been used as a factor in determining the degree and punishment of a crime, especially homicide. From premeditated murder to murder-for-hire to unpremeditated murder to felony murder to vehicular homicide to voluntary/involuntary manslaughter, why it was done and what they were thinking factors into our society's notions of culpability and justice. It's certainly true that as to the victims, dead is dead, regardless. But the criminal justice system serves the interests of the living.

[Scooter]

I have previously offered this explanation on the nature of hate crimes and their punishment:

We long ago decided that motive matters when prosecuting and sentencing certain crimes. The murder of a police officer or murder for hire is punished more severely than the murder of your child's rapist or a murder pursuant to a bar fight. A hate crime designation is just one more instance in a long list where a particular motive is used to punish the exact same act more severely.

There is an intrinsic difference between random graffiti sprayed on a wall and swastikas sprayed on the tombstones in a Jewish cemetary, between an arson committed by a firebug and the firebombing of a mosque. Inherent in every hate crime is a threat of violence directed at anyone sharing the targeted characteristic. If that threat had been made verbally, it could be prosecuted and punished. But when that threat is telegraphed just as, if not more, clearly through a violent act, it would remain unpunished if prosecution were to be limited to the overt act, without the recognition that what has taken place is a hate crime i.e. is targeting anyone who shares the same characteristic.

It is also an unfortunate fact that prior to the advent of hate crimes legislation, the hatred/phobias/obsessions/whatever that motivated perpetrators to target that characteristic, far from being punished equally with more pedestrian motivations, would serve to lessen the punishment of the perpetrators, sometimes allowing grotesquely violent acts to result in little or no prison time. It was seen as understandable that a red blooded straight boy would be so repulsed by homosexuality that he would seek out queers to maim or kill. And of course very often they were being judged by people who thought just like them, and so were willing to give credence to absurdities like Dan White's Twinkie defence to avoid punishing cold blooded premeditated murder for what it was.