Legal News

Debating the Merit of the New Hate-Crimes Bill

By Ashby Jones

Last month, without much too much fanfare, the Senate passed a so-called Hate Crimes Bill with a 63-28 vote. Click here for the story, from Politico.

The bill, called the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, named after the gay University of Wyoming student who was murdered in 1998 (pictured), expanded the list of hate crimes - which originally focused on attacks based on the victims’ race, color, religion or national origin - to include those targeted because of their gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

The bill leaves the prosecution of hate crimes mostly in the hands of the states, 45 of which have their own hate-crimes legislation. But the bill provides money to help state and local officials with the costs of prosecuting hate crimes. The federal government can step in after the Justice Department certifies that a state does not have jurisdiction or is unable to carry out justice.

The legislation has many supporters, from gay-rights groups to Jewish groups to others. Joe Solmonese, president of Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights group, said it "will provide police and sheriff's departments with the tools and resources they need to ensure that entire communities are not terrorized by hate violence."

But the bill hasn’t won over a number of commentators, who argue not against the spirit behind the bill, but the practicality of it. Namely, they argue that the law is duplicative and unnecessary, ineffectual and hard to prosecute.

For starters, writes the SF Chron’s Debra Saunders, hate crimes are typically prosecuted under more familiar names, like murder and assault.

It’s hard to understand how a federal hate-crimes law could send a stronger message than life in prison. Or a stronger message than the response of security guards at the Holocaust Museum, who, after white supremacist James Von Brunn allegedly fatally shot guard Stephen T. Johns in June, shot Von Brunn in the face. With or without the Shepard act, Von Brunn could face the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder.

And on the topic of the Holocaust Museum murder, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen first quotes the bill: “A prominent characteristic of a violent crime motivated by bias is that it devastates not just the actual victim . . . but frequently savages the community sharing the traits that caused the victim to be selected.”

Then, Cohen asks:

First, let us consider the question of which “community” von Brunn was allegedly attempting to devastate. He rushed the Holocaust museum, which memorializes the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis and their enablers. There could be no more poignant symbol for the Jewish community. Yet von Brunn killed not a Jew but an African American — security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns.

So which community was affected by this weird, virtually suicidal act? Was it the Jewish community or the black community? Since von Brunn hated both, you could argue that it does not matter.

. . .

Let us assume that the “community” is really affected by what we call a hate crime. I am Jewish. But even with von Brunn’s attack, I am more affected by a mugging in my neighborhood that might keep me from taking a walk at night than I am by a shooting at the Holocaust museum.

Concludes Cohen:

For the most part, hate-crime legislation is just a sop for politically influential interest groups — yet another area in which liberals, traditionally sensitive to civil liberties issues, have chosen to mollify an entire population at the expense of the individual and endorse discredited reasoning about deterrence.

LBers, let’s hear your thoughts.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 04, 2009 (boomark / email).