Struggling with "Hate Crimes"

As much as I would be happy to see the four perpetrators of the kidnapping and beating of the mentally-challenged young man in Chicago sent up the river for 40-50 years or so, there is an aspect of the case that is troubling to me, and I am trying hard to be consistent.

This is the fact that their sentences, assuming conviction, will be affected by the designation of what they have done as a "hate crime."  That it was a hate crime is pretty evident; when you kidnap someone of another race and scream epithets against his race, while streaming their actions live on Facebook, it is fairly clear that racial animus was part of what happened.

The question, of course, is that "hate", however defined, for a specific group -- whites, blacks, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Martians, Indians of both kinds -- is singled out in the law, for reasons that don't make sense when you start to dig a bit deeper.

Hundreds and hundreds of black men are killed on the streets of Chicago annually, these recent years of the Obama Administration.  These involve gangs, they involve drugs, and some homicides involve neither.  Is it not "hate" that drives a gang member to kill a member of a rival gang?  Is it not "hate" that is involved in the murder by a drug dealer of a rival drug dealer?

Do you follow where I'm going?  In the drug dealer case, one person got shafted by another and kills him or her.  But in the gang case, it may very well be that the dead gang member was killed by virtue of membership in the wrong gang -- the wrong "group."  How is it any different when the group for which a person is killed or attacked is a street gang, vs. the group being their religious denomination?

That's the slippery slope that hate-crimes laws take us down, and I don't really like that slope.  My point is simply that the reason that a murder is committed (or a kidnapping, in the case cited above) should not be a sentencing factor, and certainly not be to the point of adding an additional crime beyond what the actual action was.  Reason may be a prosecutor's tool in persuading a jury that motive was present to establish premeditation, but it doesn't make the wound bigger.

I am most uncomfortable with the fact that we are distinguishing what kind of "hate" we decide to punish differently.  A gang member murdering a person from a different gang because he hates the rival gang is somehow different from a group of people kidnapping and assaulting a person because he is of a different race?

Of course I'm uncomfortable.  By virtue of distinguishing what flavor of "hate" is punishable and what flavor is just fine, we have, whether intended or not, legislated thoughts that are nothing more than thoughts, and that is frightening and no place for an American government to stray.

No, we have not said in our laws that we may not hold bigoted views.  But we have distinguished that, somehow, crimes committed by people who hold those views are somehow more serious and require heavier punishment than identical crimes committed by identical people who hate their victim just because they hate their victim, or because the victim happens to belong to a group not blessed by hate-crimes laws.

I hope that the four assailants of the victim in the Chicago incident get most of the rest of their lives to rot in prison and never have the opportunity to hurt anyone again.  But I hope that sentence is assessed for the miserable crime they committed, and not for their views on white people that appeared to motivate their attacks.

We are free to think as we wish in this country.  Laws need to respect that, regardless of the thoughts.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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