Marc Fisher's second installment in our debate looks at a number of issues brought up frequently in discussions about hate crimes laws. I'll respond to each, and bring up a couple of my own.
Marc's first point involves equality under the law. He quotes a U.S. News editorial by John Leo, which said:
"The idea is to provide special protection for minorities who are frequently attacked for who they are, unlike most of the general population. But this plan violates the principle of equality under the law. If all skulls are equally valuable, as the first line of the Declaration of Independence says they are, then why don't all skull crackings deserve similar sentences?"
Marc considers this is a good question - and it would be, if that were the intent of hate crime laws. But hate crime laws do not establish a special category of victim, they establish a special category of crime: That is, crimes targeting members of "groups" within specified categories - race, religion, ethnic background, and in some states, gender or sexual orientation - and motivated by hatred of a particular group within those categories. But the laws do not protect a particular race, religion, ethnic background, gender or sexual orientation more than others. Thus, the racially motivated shooting spree by a black man in Wilkinsburg, PA, which left two white men dead and three wounded, is as much a hate crime as any other crime which targets victims based on their race. If a gang of gay men targeted straight men for violence or vandalism, that would be a hate crime too.
It is true that hate crimes are more often directed at groups which are a minority within the specified "categories," but it is unreasonable to criticize hate crime laws for that. To do so is akin to criticizing minority groups for being victimized more often than majority groups, which seems egregiously unfair.
Hate crimes are crimes of terror and inflict emotional trauma on their victims, thus perpetrators deserve additional penalties.
Marc points out that all violent crimes inflict emotional trauma, and adds that "Differentiating Hate Crimes because the perp happened to be a racist or homophobe does not lighten the trauma or deter the criminal."I am not an expert in the field of psychological trauma. But the American Psychological Association's briefing on hate crimes cited a study on the impact of hate crime victimization by Dr. Gregory M. Herek, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis, and his colleagues, Drs. Jeanine Cogan and Roy Gillis. That study found that the negative effects of hate crimes may be longer lasting than those of other crimes. Hate crime victims continued to have higher levels of depression, stress, and anger for as long as 5 years after their victimization occurred. In contrast, crime-related psychological problems dropped substantially among survivors of non-bias crimes within approximately two years after the crime.
While I don't intend to get into a "my trauma is worse than your trauma" debate, there does seem to be some evidence to back up the claim that targeted victims experience more trauma than random victims of crime.
Hate Crimes enforcement is arbitrary and questionable.
Marc again quotes the Leo editorial in support:"Law enforcement should not be in the business of calibrating the hate content of insults when adrenaline flows. Sometimes these decisions can be misty ones, based on nonverbal expressions."
Mr. Leo is correct, of course. These decisions don't belong to law enforcement, they belong to the jury. But the larger question, whether hate crimes laws are fairly or arbitrarily applied, is important too. All laws should be fairly and equally applied. Inequitable application of laws has long been - and continues to be - a problem in this country, as recently reported by Current Events Guide Clare Saliba. This is not an argument to not have laws, it is only an argument to insist that they are fairly applied.
Local authorities need to take Hate Crimes more seriously.
I'm pleased to note that we have found an island of agreement here. As Marc said, "There is no excuse for a law enforcement agency ignoring or belittling any crime," and I'm glad we agree on that point!
Marc points out that Attorney General Reno has proposed increased training and federal support for law enforcement, and I would certainly expect that to help - but I would add that she sees the purpose of such training as helping state and local law enforcement "develop the specialized skills necessary for the identification, reporting, investigation and prosecution of hate crimes" not as a replacement for hate crime laws. Att'y Gen. Reno supports the pending expansion of federal hate crimes laws as well.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.
Marc veers slightly off course in this point, referring to a First Amendment case involving high school students who published a racist newsletter, and were promptly suspended, then thrown in jail under a 1945 Florida criminal libel law which prohibits anonymous publication of material that exposes individuals or groups to "hatred, contempt, ridicule or obloquy." This is kind of an early version of a hate crime law, I suppose. Still, I am somewhat unclear about Marc's point here. To me, the case is an example of the system working properly. The charges were dropped because, according to the State's Attorney General, Supreme Court rulings "render the statute in question unconstitutional and unenforceable." I doubt if any supporter of hate crimes laws expects them to trump the Constitution, and in this case, they didn't.
Marc wraps up his piece with a "slippery slope" concern:
"Now we are faced with the very subjective, arbitrary decisions of selectively applying such laws as they were intended."
I would point out that juries have been faced with just such decisions for most of our nationhood. Every year, juries are asked to "look inside the head" of defendants and decide such questions as "was the crime premeditated?" and "was he or she legally sane at the time he committed the crime?" - and to mete out different penalties depending on the answer. And every year, juries decide cases in which the penalty is different depending on the "category" that the victim belonged to: Was the woman who was raped under 18? Was the murder victim a police officer, and if so was he on duty?Are such questions part of the "slippery slope?" If not, why not? How is the application of hate crime laws any different from the application laws concerning premeditation or insanity, or laws concerning minors or police officers?
Till next time...
Karen