Hate Crime is Thought Crime

During the 2000 United States Presidential election, the NAACP ran an ad attacking George W. Bush's record on hate crime legistlation. And, implied that his voting against it was to blame for the gruesome murder of James Byrd, Jr.. James Byrd's daughter said they she felt like George W. Bush had killed her father. What they don't tell you is that the current laws in Texas are stricter than those proposed by the hate crimes legislation. Another thing they don't mention is that 2 of the 3 men who participated in that sick display of cruelty were given the death penalty, and the third given life in prison. What more do you want? We are limited by current technology in the fact that we can't resurrect human beings so that we can kill them twice, and, personally, I can't think of a harsher non-lethal punishment than spending the rest of your life in an American prison.

Murder is murder, assault is assault, crime is crime, hate crime is thought crime.

Saige: You're correct. Thoughts, in-and-of themselves are not illegial, and I never said that they were. The point is that a distinction is made between the criminal who kills a man because the victim is a homosexual, and the criminal who kills a man for some other (and equally stupid) reason. That is, in the denotative sense of the word, discrimination. No one (and no, don't take that literally, ofcourse there are a few nuts in cabins in the backwoods of North Dakota who would...) has ever claimed that if a homosexual is murdered that less action should be taken. The point is that the same action should be taken as normal. If you take a different course of action because of the criminals' thoughts, that is thought crime. You are changing the punishment because you don't like the persons' social views. Hitler killed roughly 7 million human beings. Lenin did the same. Is Hitlers' crime worse than Lenins'? No. Murder is murder. The taking of a human life is horrible no matter what the motives. It isn't fair to the criminals or the victims to differentiate between motives.

Dazey: It is not just to punish someone more than normal because of what might happen or what has sometimes happened in other cases. If additional psychological damage occurs in any crime, then I am in favor of additional punishment. Across the board, though, not just in hate crimes.

Geez: Creating an atmosphere isn't a crime. Does history tell us that "violent crimes against minorities help create a frame of mind in which discrimination is easier"? Please give examples and/or studies from the field of criminal psychology to back up your claim. Violence is an abstract concept, so I don't know how you intend to "kick it's ass", but, if you did, that would either be obviously hipocritical, or unjust (mob rule). Intimidating people and "tearing a hole in the delicate fabric of society" (Oh my God, can you be more melodramatic?) aren't crimes either (in and of themselves). Any way you slice it, you're still discriminating against people whose opinions you don't like. It's a slippery slope, and I hope I'm not around the day we let the government start deciding whose philosophy of the week is worthy enough while dissenters are locked up for thought crime.

I have never seen a law that makes any thought illegal. You won't get arrested, no matter what goes through your head. You can imagine doing horrible things to George W. Bush, for example, and nobody's going to come knock on your door, or even bust it in, and haul you off to prison.

So claiming that legislation for hate crime creates such a thing as thought crimes is complete and total bullshit. A hate crime requires an action. Not just a thought. It requires you to viciously rape, beat, and murder someone. It requires you to tie someone to a truck and drag them down the street. It requires you to beat someone, then tie them to a fence and leave them for dead.

Action comes from thought. But thought does not create action.

No matter how many times you claim it, no matter how loudly, it still doesn't make thought illegal.

See thoughts on hate crimes for more discussion directly about hate crime legislation

Should the law punish certain crimes more harshly because of the beliefs of the criminal? Is the victim more dead because the killer hated a particular minority group?

Is murder more wrong if a bigot does it? Is assault worse because the victim was black or celibate or Martian or poor? Can the law even determine the state of mind of the perpetrator before the crime occurred? Will it have to guess, and say that all violence against a group of people is worse than violence against a group of other people?

Murder is murder. Assault is assult. Rape is rape. Violence is violence. There are already laws against them. They're horrible enough already. Let the government continue to punish actions, not thoughts.

The early and mid 20th century taught us some lessons we shouldn't forget. Even now, in the United States as well as the rest of the world, people are being chased for their sexuality, race and sex. While violence in general shouldn't be tolerated (it should have its ass kicked ;-) ), violence that intimidates and sends people hiding because of who they are should be more severely punished. A person performing a hate crime isn't only hurting his/her victim - s/he is intimidating a group and is tearing a hole in the delicate fabric of society.

There is no true need for added penalty for killing someone because they were black as opposed to killing someone because they listened to Perry Como with the volume too loud. Both are just as heinous, but will be prosecuted differently. This is wrong.

Jessie Jackson was one of the proponents of the distinction and greater sentencing for those who commit hate crimes. This was in order to protect the black community. It is unfortunate for him that he failed to actually figure the statistics, which, in 1999, showed that approximately 70% of those found guilty of hate crimes were, in fact, black. The most puzzling part of this finding, though, is that about 15% of those hate crimes were against other blacks.

We do not need additional laws to define crimes as hate crimes or others. Once it has been determined that a person committed a crime with any degree of animosity towards the victim, it is irrelevant why the animosity existed, only that it did.

A point was made in another node that dragging a man to death behind your truck would be a form of terrorism against others of the same group as that man, but I disagree. In some cases this may be correct, but I am positive there have been others where only the twisted enjoyment by the perpetrator prompted the action. People do this same sort of thing to animals. Would it also be suggested that they are trying to terrorize other animals?

While the sentiment behind this movement is not mistaken, the implementation is unnecessary and sets a dangerous precedent for the further prosecution for thought crimes.

I learned something rather disturbing in my legal terminology and personal law classes when I had been studying to become a stenographer. I learned that it is against the law to plan a crime, even if you never commit and never intend to commit said crime. It is not quite as bad as doing it, but nearly. Oh, and even thinking about killing the President is a very bad thing. Of course I also learned the statute of limitations on robbery is 7 years, so if you can keep it hidden that long, it's yours. There is no statute of limitations on murder.