OK Senate Opts Out Of Matthew Shepard Act...

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http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/03/11/Okla_Bill_Opts_Out_of_Hate_Crime_Protections/

It's Oklahoma, what do you expect?

Nothing short of this, given that Oklahoma is home to that delusional nutjob Sally Kern. If the state ultimately decides to opt out of the Matthew Shepard Act, then I will go on a boycott of that state; and I'll encourage like-minded individuals to do the same.

Sounds okay to me.
I don't believe in "hate crimes".
I don't believe that if someone assaults a person of another race (or whatever) that they should receive any greater of a sentence than if they assaulted someone of the same race.
A violent crime is a violent crime regardless of race, religion, or whatever.
It's not hard to see how this can be mis-applied or what extremes it can be taken to.
This hate crime thing smacks of double jeopardy.

Way to go Oklahoma

I suppose you also believe Oklahoma should opt out of existing hate crime laws that cover race, sex, religion, etc...?

What part of "I don't beleive in hate crimes" didn't you understand?
I also explained why.

Well, in my opinion, there's a difference between plain old assault and bias-motivated assault. You can assault someone for their money without any preexisting bias toward that person.

A bias-motivated assault is based on a prejudice against that person for their race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, etc...; i.e., a hate crime.

To clarify, my belief is that hate in itself is NOT a crime. It is only when someone, for example, kills someone else that it is a crime.
Killing someone because you hate them does not make them any more dead. How do you even prove for sure that the crime was driven by hate? It may be easy in some instances but "hate" in itself is an emotion and not an act.
It smacks of an Orwellian "thought crime" to me.
Let the act itself be judged by itself.
The fact that the suspect hated the victim or the victim's race or religion may be a motive used to establish guilt but calling it a crime and adding to the sentence because of it, to me, is injustice and too easy to misuse.
Hate crime laws are a weak deterrent at best and not worth the results of the potential misuse. It's just another ill-fated attempt to legislate morality.

NOW do you understand what I meant?

I suppose I understand your sentiments. However, I can't help but remain cynical to the claim that they're trying to "protect free speech" because the Matthew Shepard Act clearly states that nobody would be held accountable for preaching against homosexuality (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/oct/09/john-kline/rep-john-kline-and-other-republicans-say-under-hat/). I can't help but think that this is all based on prejudice against homosexuals.

You are technically correct. There are no "hate crimes" but there are hate motives.

ruveyn

With respect, I think that Raptor is being too deterministic. To suggest that (for example) an assault is an assault is an assault does not fully capture the impact of the crime upon the victim, nor the culpability of the perpetrator. At root, the criminal law's purpose to provide both specific and general deterrence, as well as its purposes to provide punishment to wrongdoers and remedy to victims all are served by way of specific attention to crimes motivated by hate.

That the effect of a crime motivated by hate is different upon the victim is almost axiomatic. When an assailant shouts, "Die [insert racial epithet here]!" as an assault is underway, it not only affects the victims physical integrity, but their emotional integrity as well. Understanding that you are the target of one or more assailants not because of your conduct, or ill fortune, but that you have been deliberately chosen because of your assailant's belief regarding your ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation or religion (for example) compounds the impact.

Furthermore, certain types of crime motivated by hate are perceived to be less egregious. Where a group of young men perceive women, gay men, south asians or any other particular group to be, "fair game," it is the duty of the State to step in and articulate a difference between hate (which is constitutionally protected belief), and the articulation of that hatred in action (which is not protected).

It is true that the evidentiary basis is always difficult to establish. But when assailants accompany their physical assault with oral expression, it is perfectly fair for the Court to draw inferences about the perpetrator's state of mind.

Hate crimes laws are being applied by far and large to whites exclusively and very rarely to blacks.

They should be nullified by the states on the basis of this alone.

I'm actually replying to your whole post, but I don't like to waste space with endless fisking, and it's this section that is most relevant to my thoughts on the matter. What troubles me about hate crime laws is that they do attempt to codify a set of values as being the "correct" ones, and add additional penalties to actions that are already criminal simply because of an assumed motive on the part of the perpetrator. I view this as too much leeway to give to our justice system, while the motivation may be pure, the application will lend itself to abuse, such as using a hate crimes enhancement to legally coerce someone into a plea bargain, or through simple selective application. Even if someone is yelling epitaphs during the commission of a crime, it is still at best an assumption that the crime is based on hate, and in my mind legal penalties cannot be assessed based on assumptions, it violates the whole spirit of "beyond reasonable doubt". I will not speculate on why Oklahoma chose to bow out of the proposed law, but whatever the reason may be has no bearing on whether the law itself is just, and I feel that it is not.

I guess the real question is why did they opt out on hate crimes against homosexuals only instead of just phasing out the application of all hate crimes.

Or did I read that article wrong and the site reporting was only concerned with the Matthew Shepard act?

I'm pretty sure OK is only trying to opt out of the Matthew Shepard Act, which I personally feel is grounded in a deep-held prejudice against homosexuals; otherwise, by their logic, they would try to eliminate all hate crime laws within their state.

If Oklahoma ultimately succeeds in opting out of the Matthew Shepard Act, I can at least take solace in the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court may intervene and tell them they have to do otherwise; the Matthew Shepard Act is a federal law, and if I learned correctly in my Government class, federal law trumps state law.

Either way, Oklahoma is high on my list of states to avoid.

You raise an interesting point, but I am not sure that it changes my perspective.

Courts make inferences daily, within the confines of the "reasonable doubt" standard. Because an accused is protected from being compelled as a witness, the Court is often confined to interpretation of the accused's actions and statements as a means to identify mens rea. This is precisely the reason that certain statements by an accused are specifically excluded from the rule against hearsay. Absent the ability of a Court (whether a judge alone or a jury) to make such inferences, no person could ever be convicted of crime requiring specific intent.

It also bears noting that we are not dealing with an, "assumption," but rather an inference. Assumptions, clearly, are risky from an evidentiary point of view. The "rebuttable presumption," that a person in possession of more than 28g of certain narcotics has the intention to traffic is just such a risky presumption. In this case, however, we are inferring state of mind from a voluntary action or statement of the accused.

(Note, most of this is written from a Canadian Common-Law perspective, and would only apply mutatis mutandis to US Common Law jurisdictions.)