Hate Crimes?

Hate crimes…as opposed to what…love crimes? Anybody who harms any individual has violated their victim’s rights and should be punished accordingly.

Are there any “good” reasons for the murder of any innocent? It’s wrong to kill your neighbor because he is a Jew. It is as wrong to kill your neighbor because his dog won’t stop barking. It’s wrong to kill a woman because she is a lesbian. It is as wrong to kill your ex-wife because she left you.

People should be punished for the crimes they commit, not the motive for the crime.

Hate crimes legislation is an emotional response to the worst kind of stupidity: racism, xenophobia. Like the crimes themselves the legislation is devoid of any rational thought whatsoever. I understand the disgust reasonable people experience witnessing senseless crimes committed against innocent people who were targeted because they are black, gay, Jewish or Muslim. But, by declaring these individuals different and subject to special treatment under law, the advocates of hate-crime legislation are reinforcing the perpetrator’s feeling that these people are in fact “different.”

Presently, federal hate-crimes laws address crimes motivated by race and religion, while other minorities, including, gays and people with disabilities, continue to lobby Congress for recognition in the law. The Matthew Shepard bill, named after a gay man beaten to death in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998, failed to make it to President Bush’s desk last year after passing both houses of Congress. The president had promised to veto the bill, and for whatever reason, the Democratic leadership in Congress decided not to send the bill up the road. If Democrats maintain their control of Congress after the November ’08 election, the Matthew Shepard bill will be made law soon enough.

Regardless of what Congress does, this sad chapter in American jurisprudence may soon be over. Laws that usurp the authority of judges to pass sentence in any criminal case may already be mute.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has struck down several state hate-crime laws. A New Jersey statute was declared unconstitutional because the law authorized judges to make a factual determination about the motive of the defendant. In a criminal trial that’s the jury’s responsibility. In another case decided this year, the Supreme Court took a look at laws that mandate minimum and maximum sentences for specific crimes. In this case the Supreme Court defined mandatory sentencing guidelines as “a starting point” or “initial benchmark.” As reported in the New York Times, “Justice Stevens went on to say that the guidelines were just one factor in the “individualized assessment” that a judge must make in every case. The judge may not presume that the guidelines’ range is reasonable.”

This is a good thing. This means that no matter what hate-crimes legislation comes down the pike, whether federal or state, criminal sentences will once again be rendered by judges, not legislatures responding to the emotional appeals of the mob, their constituents.

Murderers will be punished for “murder,” regardless of the nature of the devil that made them do it.