OK Senate Opts Out Of Matthew Shepard Act...

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I wasn't saying that inferred evidence was completely useless in a court setting, more that I don't think it's appropriate to add additional penalties to acts that are already criminal because the person committing them may hold beliefs that society frowns upon. It's too close to policing thought for my comfort and it won't even do anything to "reform" the people it's applied to, it will simply reinforce their belief that they are being persecuted. I just think it's bad law all around, just punish the actual crime, not the thought process that may have led to it.

I would think that with "hate crimes" they would have to prove that the crime was motivated by hate and not by anything else. They already punish killings done by accident in the course of robbery more severely than other kinds of killings, which shows that property is the most important thing as always.

Actually, what you're referring to is what's called an "aggravating factor" and can be applied for a number of different reasons, including exceptional brutality, attacking a law enforcement officer, or killing for pay, in this case I think the term is "in commission of a felony". If you'd take your ideological blinders off for a moment, you might think this all the way through and recognize that the reason killing for profit, i.e. in the course of a robbery, is considered worse than killing out of anger because it implies a far more disturbing lack of morality. In my state killing for profit is one of the few circumstances that can make you eligible to be executed, because our system values life over property and comes down hard on those who operate the other way around.

Just to point out - one possible reason for hate crime legislation where it concerns crimes against gay people is that it is a countermeasure against the "gay panic" defense. Basically, in some cases, juries have acquitted a defendant of murder, or significantly lowered the charge, because the defendant asserted an affirmative defense that he was so freaked out by a gay person hitting on him, or even being potentially interested in him, that he was driven to kill that person. This has succeeded as recently as last year in court, so it is still a major concern. Hate crime legislation might serve to counteract this by bumping the crime back up to a higher degree of crime, where it should be, or barring the gay panic defense from being used altogether.

There are other areas where I think that hate crime legislation is or would be still applicable. Namely, gender identity and disability, the former for similar reasons as for homosexuality ("trans panic" has also been used as a defense), and the latter because there are still people who are willing to believe that someone was "driven" to kill their disabled child or other ward because that person was a "burden." I would not recommend long-term hate crime legislation, and see it only as a tool to fix existing biases, so hopefully one day all people will believe that it is just as heinous to kill a gay/trans/disabled/etc. person as it is to kill anyone else.

The "gay panic defense" is bullsh*t. Suppose a racist white person assaulted a black person just for going near him; and the racist man defended himself by saying the black man's presence intimidated him. That defense is not going to cut it and makes it no less a hate crime. I feel the "gay panic defense" is dehumanizing toward homosexuals.

As do I. Hopefully eventually the American court system as a whole will recognize this.

I did a YouTube Video on Matthew Shepard's murder.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKCzyWFy0K0

I run headlong into a similar concern. Hate is protected thought, belief and opinion. The expression of hatred is protected expression. Violence motivated by hatred is not protected behaviour. So where to draw the line--and indeed, is this a line that ought properly to be drawn.

As a society, I think we already do much to draw distinctions between gravity of offences. Homicide is not merely homicde. In Canada there are a variety of offences under the Criminal Code each with their own particular ambit: Murder (in two distinct degress), Manslaughter, Infanticide, Criminal Negligence Causing Death, Dangerous Operation of a Motor Vehicle Causing Death, etc.

Similarly, we have gradations of assult (the most usual offence that is involved in "hate crimes."). Some gradations are based on more objective criteria (assault causing bodily harm), some on the nature of the assult (sexual assault), some on more subjective criteria (aggravated assault).

It is fair to say that, in Canada at least, offences against the person can involve a spectrum of behaviour that is treated differently--not the least reason being the motivation of the offender. So if we have already reached the proposition that criminal law is nuanced enough to inquire into the motive for crime, I am comfortable with the proposition that a line is capable of being drawn, such that a motivation can aggravate the severity of the offence.

As to whether the line should be drawn, I am more sanguine. As a member of more than one group against whom hate crimes have been committed, I take comfort from the fact that Parliament has chosen to speak clearly and enunciate a social value in my country that attacks against people or against institutions based on these types of motives will be treated more seriously that simple hooliganism.

We still live in a world where synagogues get vandalized: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story ... ttack.html The same is true of gurdwaras, mosques and churches. Gays get bashed, and african americans get told to, "leave the store." Until we can embrace a culture of diversity, I think that there is a still a role for the criminal law to draw lines between what is acceptable and what is not, and to distinguish between gradations of severity.