Hate Crimes

Hate crimes have become a major concern among lawmakers in all nations and at all levels of government. The main concern is that hate crimes are nothing new. Some examples from the past are the Roman persecution of Christians and the Nazi solution for the Jews. More recently we have experienced the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and genocide in Rwanda. Racial and religious bias seems to be the inspiration for most hate crimes in the United States. Even as the United States was being settled in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Native Americans were the victims of intimidation and violence. During the last two hundred years, examples in the United States include lynching of African Americans, cross burnings to dive black families out of white neighborhoods, assaults on gay and lesbian people, and painting swastikas on Jewish synagogues. In the United States, over 8, 000 hate crimes were reported in 1995. Over one third were against African Americans, while the others were motivated by biases anti white, anti Jewish, anti gay, and anti Hispanic. Nearly 7 years ago a former Ku Klux Klansman, Thomas E. Blanton Jr. was convicted for blowing up a church in Birmingham and killing four young black girls in 1963. Also in 1963, Alabama Governor George C. Wallace ordered National Guard Troops to block black students from entering public schools. Birmingham safety commissioner Eugene “Bull” Conner turned German shepards and fire hoses on peaceful demonstrators. These are just a few examples of cases less than 50 miles from Ragland. Hate crime laws fall into several categories: (a) specific bias motivated acts as distinct crimes; (b) criminal penalty enhancement; (c) creation of a distinct civil cause of action for hate crimes; and (d) requirement of administrative agencies to collect hate crime statistics. The laws often focus on war crime, genocide, and crimes against humanity with the prohibition against discriminatory action limited to public officials. As defined by the National Crime Victim Survey of 1999, “A hate crime is a criminal offense committed against a person or property motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a racial group, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, or disability. The offense is considered a hate crime whether or not the offender’s perception of the victim as a member or supporter of a protected group is correct.” Federal prosecution in the United States is possible for hate crimes based on the basis of a person’s race, color, religion, or national origin when participating in a federally protected activity. The proposals to add perceived gender, sexual orientation and disability have been rejected. Based on statistics from the FBI Hate Crime Division, hate crimes in 2006 increased almost 8% nationwide. There were 5,499 crimes reported against persons, 46% were classified as intimidation and 31.9 percent as simple assaults. 81% of the 3,593, crimes were acts of vandalism or destruction of property. 58.6% of the 7,330 know offenders were white while 20.6% were black. Over on half, 52% of the 9,652 victims were targeted due to racial bias. Hate crimes threaten the safety and welfare of all citizens as well causing incalculable physical and emotional damage and destroy the entire society. These crimes send a strong message of intolerance and discrimination to all members of the group to which the victim belongs. Hate crimes disrupt the entire community and corrupt the civility that is required for a healthy democratic process. Members of a democratic society are not required to approve of the practices and beliefs of others, but should never commit criminal acts on account of the disapproval. Laws in the United States should be strengthened to provide a clear understanding of the severity of hate crimes and the importance of preventing them. In the case of Wisconsin versus Mitchell the Supreme Court unanimously found “that bias motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims and incite community unrest…” The State’s desire to remedy the perceived harms yields an adequate explanation for its penalty enhancement provision over and above just disagreeing with the offenders beliefs. The Supreme Court further stated that penalty enhancement hate crime statutes do not conflict with free speech rights because they do not punish for the exercise of free expression but rather they allow the court system to consider motive when sentencing someone for conduct not permitted under the First Amendment. Society can suffer disempowerment when the core of a person’s identity is attacked, the degradation and dehumanization is severe and can lead to additional emotional and physiological problems. It is also believed that the likelihood of retaliatory crimes is increased when a hate crime has been committed. An example to support this assertion is the riots in Los Angeles that came after the beating of Rodney King by a group of white police officers. The FBI says that the National Alliance is a domestic terror group. William Pierce says he’s in the communications business. Deep in the hills of West Virginia is a compound or rather a secluded lot with multiple buildings on acres of land and fences. Mr. Pierce repeats his topic in books, on CDs on the internet, that the Jews control American government and the media. Blacks roam the streets waiting to rape innocent white women. Due to the ineffective immigration laws America’s towns have turned into “a Third World cesspool of brown skin and broken English.” It is estimated that there are 16 active cells nationwide and a membership of more than 1,500. It is believed that the membership has increased 30 fold since 1990. Pierce believes that the attacks on September 11th are validation of his anti immigrant, anti Israel platform. He also has written a book “The Turner Diaries” about an American race war that allegedly inspired Timothy Mc Veigh to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995. Pierce has gone multimedia. He owns a record label “Resistance Records” and has released a video game called “Ethnic Cleansing”. The label on the game describes it like this: Run through the ghetto blasting away various blacks and spics in an attempt to gain entrance to the subway system, where the Jews have hidden to avoid the carnage.” Civil rights organizations are concerned that Pierce is targeting teens trying to recruit them into his ranks. Others have argued that hate crime laws divide society, as groups apply to have their opponents silenced. It is also argued that if this is true then all violent crimes are hate crimes. Therefore, if there is no alternate reason for prosecuting some more harshly for the same crime based on who the victim is, then different defendants are treated differently under the law which violates the United States Constitution. To attempt to separate the motivation in rape and murder cases to fit into one of the two categories is impossible. The victims still suffer the same results. Legislation of different sentences based on a faulty definition of what makes a hate crime a hate crime (i.e. Thoughts versus actions) is ridiculous. The same punishment should be enforced regardless of the motivation of the perpetrator.