Hate Crime Legislation: An Experiment

Explain how your neighbor planning to kill his wife is just as harmful to you as your other neighbor planning to kill the first white man he comes across as he exits his home.

 

Makes plenty of sense if the crimes are equal.

 

Less discriminating? We're talking about a target base of ______s of people (given the area a suspect lives) vs. one for a reason exclusive to that singular target. We're discussing a person willing to commit murder on a victim simply due to superficial pre-conceived notions vs. someone willing to commit murder due to that persons individual issue. To suggest the two minds (however lost they may be) are on the same wave length is a deliberately far-fetched notion.

 

Crime is crime - although I would like to know why people commit the crimes they do, it should have no bearing on the sentence. You can attack the man you catch sleeping with your wife and scream all the curses in the world, but if you say a racial slur you now get extra time tacked on to your sentence? Doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't make the outcome any different.

 

Just becuase Racism is more prevalent among whites (I'm gonna give you that assumption, I don't think it's true a better statment would be "Racism is more obvious and understood among whites") doesn't mean that Racism from a Black is any less dangerous.

This is a scary scary precident you're talking about setting here.

 

Except that we already consider a number of variables when it comes to sentencing... most notably motive & method. It's why a domestic terrorist will likely receive life without the option of parole or the death penalty, whereas others with a 1st degree murder charge may experience less.

 

I suppose Dave would be more dangerous to "society" since he is engaging in predatory violence as opposed to reactionary violence, but I don't see how it relates to hate-crime legislation.

 

Not exactly. Mitigating and aggravating factors are the primary determinants of the severity of a sentence, whereas the mens rea and actus reus are the primary determinants of the severity of the crime. "Motive", however, is something the prosecution must establish in order to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt - it does not pertain to sentencing. As far as the "method", that is not an actual element in determining the severity of a sentence or a crime.

In both your examples, the actus reus is the same, i.e., both individuals committed an act of violence, but the mens rea differs insofar as "Dave's" crime was premeditated whereas Bill's was not, which is why "Dave" should be considered more dangerous.

 

That is totally false. A person who commits premeditated murder is, by definition, a danger to society. That's why we incarcerate them.

The differences are superficial. The commonality is that both people are willing to murder someone they hate. God forbid you should anger either one of them.

 

They are not just as harmful to me specifically, but the murdered wife might have something to say about it.

 

Method disperses the ambiguity some laws exhibit, assault for instance... where penalty escalates from simple misdemeanor depending on the method in which said assault took place (example: with a deady weapon).

While true, this surface statement wouldn't alter the fact that premeditation to murder a specific person for a specific purpose (exclusive to said person) is of no danger to an unrelated person, whereas premeditation to murder a person of a specific race is a danger to a good number of people within the range of the assailant.

You don't need to anger anyone to be a victim of a hate crime. All that is needed is that you fit the description.

 

Actually:

Source

...Making my whim scenario a much more likely scenario than the instance you suggest. Hopefully, this means you and I can have a meaningful discussion vs. your continued defense of theoretical beings, yes?