Conspiracies and Extremism Guide Marc Fisher, an opponent of hate crime laws, has responded to my article Blinded By Hate in a new feature "The Hate Debate." We disagree on several points, agree on a couple. This is my response to his article.
Marc first took issue with my statement
"I also disagree with those who say that 'hate crimes' are 'thought policing.' In my opinion, establishing whether the perpetrator was motivated by hate for the group the victim represented is no different than establishing whether the crime was premeditated. In fact, establishing a motive is usually a part of establishing premeditation,"He points out in his response that
"motivation is different from the condition of 'premeditation.' A jealous husband may be motivated to kill his wife because she cheated on him, but that motivation has nothing to do with whether he planned the crime ahead of time (premeditation) or it was a spur-of-the-moment act of rage."
I must acknowledge this point. Motivation is not the same as premeditation. It would have more accurate to say that establishing that the suspect had a motive to commit the crime is sometimes used to make the charge of premeditation more credible. But, my point was, and remains, that establishing "premeditation" is establishing what was going on inside the defendant's head, just as Marc says that establishing "hate" is.
Marc's view, as stated in his "Open Letter to President Clinton," and reiterated in his response to my article, is that hate crimes are thought crimes:
It adds to existing laws which already forbid violence, intimidation, and abuse (regardless of age, sex, color, or sexual preference) and makes the penalties for commission of a crime stiffer depending on what the criminal was thinking at the time.
But in disputing whether establishing motive was the same as establishing premeditation, he states:
Most capital crimes require premeditation before a death sentence can be meted out.
Is this not also an example of making a penalty stiffer because of "what the criminal was thinking" - i.e., whether he planned the crime?
We essentially agree that hate crimes are more often really about terrorizing a particular group of people. Marc goes on to ask :
[if] Hate Crimes are really terror crimes, why isn't it "more illegal" for Palestinian extremists to kill Americans than it was for Tim McVeigh? McVeigh's target was the big, impersonal US Government, not the 168 people he killed. When Libyans blew up Pan Am 103 or others planted bombs in the World Trade Center, why are their crimes any different than those of Richard Baumhammers?
My answer is that they aren't different, really. I would suggest that if state and local authorities took "hate" terrorism as seriously as they took other forms of terrorism, there would - perhaps - be no need for hate crimes legislation. But the facts are that, especially when local authorities are not particularly sympathetic to the targeted group, such crimes are often brushed aside, paperwork shuffled to the bottom of the stack, a cursory investigation may be made - but nothing happens. Brandon Teena might be alive today if the local sheriff had taken his complaint of rape seriously. Instead, the Sheriff ridiculed Teena and, according to some reports, ordered his deputies not to investigate the complaint. Hate crimes laws provide a means to insure that such crimes are punished; currently if such actions interfere with federally protected rights, and in the legislation being considered, if such actions involve interstate commerce in any way.
I must also point out that neither one of us addressed the point in in Law Guide Paul Reed's article commenting on hate crimes laws in the wake of Matthew Shepard's murder: Hate crime laws allow authorities to treat what would otherwise be minor acts of violence or vandalism as the terrorist acts that they truly are, when they are repeatedly directed at a particular target. I heartily agree with this point. It is one thing to "slap the wrist" of a teenager who paints graffiti on somebody's house or car as a lark. A teenager who deliberately targets a group and repeatedly vandalizes the property of that target group is, in my mind, committing an entirely different act. Such acts are not vandalism, they are terrorism, meant to convey a message of threat to that target group. Again, if our laws treated these acts as the terrorism that they are, there would - again, perhaps - be no need for "hate crimes" laws.Finally, neither of us addressed the point in Race Relations Guide Kimberly Hohman's article about hate crimes legislation: "What sets hate crimes apart from other acts of violence is the psychological damage that they leave behind." This, too, is a good point which has not yet been addressed in this "cyber-debate." After all, psychological damage is grounds for additional "punitive" awards in civil cases. Why shouldn't it be grounds for additional "punitive" penalties in criminal cases?
Karen