Absence of Hate Crime Laws put Hoosiers at Risk

Thanks (4.00 / 1)

Long time reader, first time poster.

This is an eye opening entry. Thanks

I know it must be difficult, especially since there are even people within this blog that use such cruel language to try and make a point. Please keep us updated!

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by: Indiana08 @ Mon May 26, 2008 at 10:41:43 AM CDT

I appreciate your position... (0.00 / 0)

and am sorry that you were attacked.  But I don't know if I agree with giving someone a harsher sentence based on what is going on in their head.

An attack is an attack.  Why should someone who shouts "faggot" as they beat someone up get more time than someone who simply beats someone up?

I'm open to persuasion on the issue.

On another note, I hope you're feeling better.

Hoosier Progressive

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by: Vox Populi @ Mon May 26, 2008 at 11:23:56 AM CDT

different thoughts (4.00 / 1)

I see it this way. If you're attacking someone just because they are a minority/different, it is a hate crime. Like the guy on the east coast a few years ago who went into a bar with an ax and just started swinging away because he hated gay people. No other reason. Didn't know anyone, just assumed they deserved to die.

Same goes when someone is physically attacked. Out of no where a stranger wants to kill you because you're black, or gay, or hispanic, etc. They deserve harsher punishment because they're trying to put fear into people, they're expressing bigot ideals in the worst way, and they deserve to be held accountable for their actions.

Two drunk guys fighting over a girl in the street should not hold the same punishment as someone getting hit in the head for minding his own business and being who he is. No one deserves to live in fear.

When a guy knows he'll get the same type of punishment for attacking a minority that he'll get for a dumb bar fight, then he'll do it. There isn't a lot that'll hold him back. It deserves to be harsher punishment.  

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by: Indiana08 @ Mon May 26, 2008 at 13:15:56 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I think that establishing (4.00 / 2)

motive becomes very important in these cases.  

And I think that casting this as minority protection is extremely dangerous and opens the gateway to anti democratic tendencies.

I would argue that the essence of a hate crime is terrorism.  

It is an act of symbolic violence intended to cow and frighten others of the targeted group.  In that it creates a wider class of victims than that proximate victim of the act of physical violence.  This is the basis upon which additional punishment in these cases has basis. It does not establish unequal protection for individuals under the law, because the victim is not the proximate victim (in this case Mr. Flood), but all individuals of the targeted group that the action is intended to terrorize.

In this, the heart of the matter is not the protection of minorities, but the maintenance of the rule of law in society.

Thus, an act of violence intended to terrorize heterosexuals as a group is every bit as deserving of additional punishment as one in which the targeted group is homosexuals.

The key to additional punishment then is not the action to the proximate victim, but whether the facts of the case indicate that the act was intended to intimidate the wider group. I don't think that the simple statement of a slur in the heat of the moment establishes intent alone, but must be supported by something more substantial that the identity of the proximate victim.

Regardless, any act of violence (or the threat of it) should be punished regardless of the identity of the proximate victim.  

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by: ManfromMiddletown @ Mon May 26, 2008 at 13:37:27 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Fear? (0.00 / 0)

Isn't all crime about fear?  Random crime is hateful, too.  If I live in a neighborhood that's experiencing a crime wave, where people are randomly getting assaulted, I'm going to be afraid to walk in my neighborhood.  Does that mean if I get assaulted, the person who attacked me deserves a tougher sentence because my community was in fear before I was assaulted?

Doesn't that kind of "me too-ism" start to make hate crimes legislation irrelevent?  The punishment should fit the crime, no matter what it is.  If you burn a cross in someone's yard, arson, destruction of private property, trespass, intimidation, these are all crimes the perp can be charged with.

Hoosier Progressive

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by: Vox Populi @ Tue May 27, 2008 at 01:24:01 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Yo Vox (4.00 / 1)

To my mind, the most persuasive argument for hate crimes legislation is based in threats to associational freedoms.  Basically, crimes that target members of discrete vulnerable minorities harm not only the individual victims (the folks who get beat up) but they also harm similarly situated individuals who now fear that they will be targeted because of their membership in the same minority.  Someone hurling a brick through a gay person's window and shouting "No fags allowed in our town" is a substantially more invidious act than a simple random act of vandalism, because it sends a message of intimidation to a larger community of individuals (more precisely it is intending to drive all gay folk from the town, not merely the ones targeted for the specific act of vandalism).  It doesn't take much knowledge of GLBT and African American history to know that such behavior is extremely harmful and has been used, historically, to silence and intimidate vulnerable minorities.  In our system of justice, punishment is considered just when it is distributed proportionally to the harm caused.  Thus, behavior that seeks to intimidate a discrete vulnerable minority should be punished more severely than identical behavior that contextually does not seek to intimidate such a minority.  

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by: Tyrion @ Mon May 26, 2008 at 13:40:23 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I guess that's somewhat persuasive... (0.00 / 0)

but isn't there a little hatred behind most crimes?

What if a criminal preys on the elderly, not because he hates old people but because they offer the least resistance?  A series of such crimes against the elderly could surely spread fear among that community.  A good prosecutor could, under this situation, charge the criminal under a hypothetical hate crimes statute and the criminal, who again had no particular animosity against the elderly, could get a harsher punishment than someone who committed the same crimes against young people.

If a self-avowed white supremecist carjacks and murders the black driver of a new Mercedes, should he get a harsher penalty than if the driver was white?  Again, even if the criminal's motive was not racial (the dude just really wanted that Benz), a prosecutor who finds out the perp is a racist could charge him with hate crimes.  

I know these are extreme circumstances and the penalties in each case are likely to be severe anyway, but I think when we start criminalizing thought there's a lot of room for abuse.

Hoosier Progressive

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by: Vox Populi @ Tue May 27, 2008 at 01:18:45 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

No, not all or (even most) crime involves hate. (0.00 / 0)

Some are just greed or desperation.  There are "crimes" that are simply the result of neglect.  There is a whole classification of crimes (drug use, prostitution, etc...) that are simply crimes that communities determine to be immoral (though there might be some elements of self-hate in them).  A lot of violent crimes may be the result of anger, but I think that is different than hatred.  I can be angry at someone I love (a family member or significant other), but that doesn't mean I hate them.

This assault occurred for no other reason that I can determine than hatred directed towards individuals' sexual orientation and gender (lest we forget the woman assaulted as well).

"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority."  --Benjamin Franklin

Yes, even Democratic authority.

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by: Daily Activist @ Tue May 27, 2008 at 12:31:21 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I'm not talking about "this" assault... (0.00 / 0)

I'm talking about the justness of hate crimes legislation in general.  Think about the hypothetical situations I brought up.  The criminal who carjacks and murders (or maybe even just carjacks) the black man now stands a likelyhood of getting charged for a harsher crime than if the victim were another white man.  A zealous prosecutor is going to find out the carjacker is a racist and even though that wasn't the motivation to the crime, the prosecutor will make that case.

In the specific assault, how do we know that sexual orientation was the genesis of the attack?  Couldn't it just have been a couple drunk country boys picking on whomever happened to be in their way?  I've heard plenty of straight guys use the word "faggot" toward each other.  As you said, a female was involved too so it wasn't completely an anti-gay attack.

I'm not excusing the attack at all.  But I find it difficult to see it as "special" and an attack on women where the men may be misogynistic and shouting "bitch" as "normal."  

Couldn't "hate crimes" violate equal protection under the law by making crimes against certain groups or individuals more punative?

Hoosier Progressive

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by: Vox Populi @ Tue May 27, 2008 at 13:08:56 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I think... (4.00 / 1)

...your advocacy is too hypothetical here to be persuasive.

Prosecutors aren't allowed to simply ascribe intent because someone has a general antipathy towards a class of individuals.  They must actually present evidence of intent in the particular crime (which is done all the time and is one of the ways in which different degrees of a particular crime are established).  In other words, if a white supremacist jacks up a black person's car, but there is no evidence that it was racially motivated, the hate-crime statute couldn't be applied.  You need evidence of specific intent, not a history of the defendant's racial prejudice.  

I think it's also pretty ridiculous to pretend that certain types of crimes don't have broader socio-cultural contexts that should be considered.    Of course context matters.  The composite bits of intimidation and violence that constituted extralegal racial oppression in the late 19th century only infrequently reached the intensity of "serious felonies," but they were still all absolutely essential to the maintenance of a racist social structure.  We remember how heinous lynchings were, but they were so heinous not just because individuals lost their lives -- though that was, indeed, obviously heinous -- but because they issued a message to African American communities that they were totally subject to the whim and prejudice of the "dominant" white community.  Of course, beatings, threats, and vandalism also accompanied those lynchings -- and, indeed, were more frequent.  Would you seriously contend that, given the larger context, breaking the window of a black-owned store front is absolutely equivalent to today me drunkenly throwing a brick through the window of a McDonald's?  Is the social meaning of each acts really the same?  Of course not.  One is much more invidious and harmful to social stability and tranquility.

Indeed, the legal system already "mak[es] crimes against certain groups or individuals more punitive" by considering how relatively heinous they are, the vulnerability of the victim(s), and a host of other issues.  Those are all things that are argued about during sentencing.  The broader socio-cultural context and the harm done to the community seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to consider as well.  

What is most telling about this entire debate is that it pits vague hypothetical scenarios -- white supremacists jacking black car owners will be punished too heavily! -- against empirical studies that show that "hate-crimes" do have extremely negative effects on community cohesion and subjective feelings of safety and well-being.  Meanwhile, there are plenty of jurisdictions that have hate-crime legislation but I'm not aware of any actual injustices of the type that worry you being perpetrated under the auspices of those laws.  Do you have any real examples of injustices to defendants or do we have to continue to rebut the most unlikely scenario you can imagine?  

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by: Tyrion @ Tue May 27, 2008 at 14:15:38 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I guess (0.00 / 0)

Hate crimes don't mean anything to me personally and as long as all crimes are punished I don't ultimately care whether there are hate crimes laws or not.  Have at it.  

Hoosier Progressive

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by: Vox Populi @ Tue May 27, 2008 at 15:08:06 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Wait (0.00 / 0)

I thought you said you were "open to persuasion on this issue."  Now you've abandoned argument and are basically just saying you don't care.  That doesn't seem very consistent to me.

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by: Tyrion @ Tue May 27, 2008 at 15:24:05 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Just had a pretty bad morning. (0.00 / 0)

I'll come back to this after I've cleared my head.

Hoosier Progressive

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by: Vox Populi @ Tue May 27, 2008 at 15:59:39 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Hope your day gets better. (0.00 / 0)

n/t

"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority."  --Benjamin Franklin

Yes, even Democratic authority.

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by: Daily Activist @ Tue May 27, 2008 at 16:07:18 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

If you or Spectrum are planning on doing... (0.00 / 0)

...anything on campus or in Muncie, please post it here on Blue Indiana or email me at chad (at) dailyactivist (dot) org.  I and my two roommates will be there to show our support.

Is the perpetrator in your case being charged with anything?  

"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority."  --Benjamin Franklin

Yes, even Democratic authority.

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by: Daily Activist @ Mon May 26, 2008 at 13:56:11 PM CDT

and be sure to post it widely... (4.00 / 1)

because you'll have activists across the state turning out for it..I'll make sure!

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by: LafayetteLib @ Tue May 27, 2008 at 00:07:07 AM CDT