OK, I’ve ignored it and ignored it, but now that there’s going to be a march tomorrow, I have to ask:
Why does it have to be a “hate crime?”
I mean, set aside the usual grim joke, as in: You mean, as opposed to those love crimes in which someone is shot and then dragged behind a truck for 11 miles?
And set aside the weirdness of the emergence of a group calling itself the New Black Panther Party, which hearkens back to a day long before the term “hate crime” was invented. It seems… anachronistic, out of sync.
I’m just asking, why does it have to have the political element of being called a “hate crime”? Why not just prosecute the perpetrating to the nth degree? I mean, if this guy’s guilty, he’s at least going to spend the rest of his life in prison, right?
As you know, one of the few things I agree with libertarians about is that in THIS country, there should be no such thing as a “hate crime.” The idea of punishing the political intent behind a crime — essentially, punishing thought, however represensible — is utterly and completely unAmerican. The only way thought or intent should come into the prosecution calculation is in trying to determine whether the perpetrator meant to do what he did, and understood what he was doing.
And yes, I know the answer to the question I pose in my headline above; I just consider it to be insufficient. The answer to “why must it be a hate crime” is that it’s deeply important to a lot of people to feel singled out to be victims of heinous crimes on the basis of accidents of demography to know that society disapproves of such mistreatment. But the legitimate way for society to show that is by fully punishing the actions, not by outlawing the abominable attitudes.
Punish the crime. Not the fact that the person who did it is a hateful bastard. That’s for God to deal with, not the state.
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Boy has the Newberry story gotten out of hand. Would somebody PLEASE check the facts with the local police. They would learn that behind this awful crime is a love triangle (quadrangle actually) straight from Jerry Springer land. With a cast of characters looking for any and all opportunities to sensationalize, exploit, and profit from a tragic event. Is there NO RESPONSIBLE REPORTING GOING ON OUT THERE!
This story is getting such wide-spread promotion because of the new “Black Panthers,” however was there that much news and reaction about the white racist group that distributed hate material to residents in Chapin & Little Mountain after the murder of Deshaun Clark by a white man, Francis Marion Reeves, III? That white racist group said they planned a march, but fortunately it never materialized. I never heard any complaints from the African Americans in the area about it.
It may have been a love “..angle,” but to have pulled the body for some 8-9 miles down Hwy 34 & US 176 was crazy and could have been latent racism. I trust Sheriff Foster and the other agencies to do a thorough job and the truth will come out.
Brad, are you going to document the march?
A crime’s a crime. Prosecute the individual for what he did, not what he was thinking when he did it.
I live in Newberry and none of this hasn’t been easy. Things have been tense. Granted, a lot of it is just tongue wagging, something to pass the time, but sadly not all of it.
You hear a lot of young people talking about their outrage, though neither side seem to be able to say why. Beyond the Hill incident, it is just because of “other things, you know”. Old people on the other hand talk about the bad old days, what “they” did to us, whether black or white. To be honest, it isn’t outrage, it is just rage. Two groups desperately wanting to justify past injuries.
For me that isn’t the galling part. A friend has been working with the literacy program at Wise St. Park. It was started by two fine ladies who just wanted to do something for their community, a community that needs any help it can get and has needed it for decades, but since this began everyone has been calling in sick. As far as I know, the NBPP doesn’t officially support segregation, but they are doing a fine job of promoting it. This should have been a moment where the entire community came together, not this.
On a lighter note, I was happy to see that Mr. Shabaz was as least thoughtful enough to not only demand reparations for the actions of the state and country, but also from the colony. I think we can all agree that the crown has been far too quiet on this subject.
No, jfx, I’m not working today, beyond checking comments. I might post something later in the day, but right now I’m busy with family business. And no, I’m not going to Newberry. Basically, I said above what I was interested in saying about this.
We always look at intent when a crime is committed. If someone is killed, the intent is what we prosecute. Accidental death in a negligent car accident is treated differently than intentional killing with malice aforethought. Is it different to burn a cross in someones yard than a bag of dog poop on their front stoop? in either case, something is burning, but there is a world of difference.
@TJC–Good points–some of this has to do with the conflicting reasons we prosecute and incarcerate–part is to segregate harmful people from society, part is to punish, part to rehabilitate, among others. How harmful is this person? How worthy of punishment? How likely to be rehabilitated?
A great example is someone is driving and hits and kills a child. We care if the person was impaired, if it was a residential street, what time of day or night it was, how fast the person was going relative to the conditions, and so on. We don’t treat a driver driving top speed though a group of kids in a residential area at 4PM that same as some one who hits a child who wandered onto the interstate at 4 AM! We certainly don’t treat a driver who drove up on the front lawn to hit the kid the same.
No, Kathryn, those are not good points. Or at least, not points relevant to the subject at hand.
In fact, on the intent thing — forgive me for saying this, but are y’all being deliberately obtuse?
YES, we consider INTENT, in the sense of “Did this person INTEND to commit this crime?” The level of culpability between deliberate murder and an accident is huge, and we are also right to distinguish between a crime of passion and premeditation — in other words, was the intent spur-of-the-moment or of long standing.
That sense of “intent” in NO way trespasses upon the realm of POLITICAL THOUGHT. And in a liberal democracy, that is the final frontier, the line you do not cross, or else you’re in Orwell land.
You DO see the difference, don’t you — the bright, clear, QUALITATIVE difference — between pure intent and punishing political ideas? Don’t you?
Brad, you ignorant slut–of course I forgive you for calling me deliberately obtuse when I am writing with all sincerity and clarity I can muster.
You can have all the ideas you want in this society (I think so, anyway, off the top of my head), but when you ACT on them, we have a problem. You DO see the difference, don’t you–the bright, clear, QUALITATIVE difference– between punishing political ideas and punishing ACTIONS motivated by aggravating intent?
Forgive me, but you’re the one who’s being obtuse, Mr. W. Of course, I’m sure it’s not deliberate. The “political intent” isn’t being punished, the DEED (murder, assault, whatever) is.
“YES, we consider INTENT, in the sense of ‘Did this person INTEND to commit this crime?'”
It goes a heck of a lot further than that – we consider all kinds of things, premeditation, motive, not just whether it was a crime or an accident.
That said, I oppose hate crimes legislation for different reasons than you do -such laws just give prosecutors the opportunity to overcharge the heck out of a lot of crimes. Racial motivation, if it exists, should be considered as an aggravating factor in sentencing, not the basis for a separate charge.
While I mostly agree with Brad on this one it certainly stands to reason that a person who kills for money isn’t quite as dispicable as someone who kills because his victim is a certain race or religion. Also, the “punishing political ideas” comment is a bit of a stretch.
Still, intentional killing is murder, regardless of the reason (other than self-defense). The punishment in both cases should be severe but essentially the same.
Still, what about burning poop versus burning crosses? Is one different than the other, and why? At the end of the day, Mr. Warthen, would you charge both of these the same?
Well, bud–actually we reserve our worst punishments for people who not only kill with intent, but do so with aggravating circumstances–like adding torture to the mix, or the victim was a cop, and so on. This *could* be an aggravating circumstance.
It is interesting to me where people come down on the issue of punishing killers. Someone who was intentionally intoxicated and got behind the wheel, someone who has a really bad temper–they are more likely to kill again than someone who just wants the life insurance money or out of an abusive marriage. Someone who robs to feed his family, and one of his coconspirators is shot by the clerk–that’s murder, too.
Burning a cross is definitely more of an implied threat than burning dog doody, in most contexts, don’t you think?
I think so too. And it affects more than the person who gets has a burning cross. The wider threat is implicit and affects a whole communities political speech as well, let alone their right to pursue happiness, life and liberty. It is a fundamentally different crime. Hate crime prosecutions are not blithely undertaken. They are generally deeply considered before being pursued by prosecutors.
OK, I’m about to do something that they teach prospective lawyers in Mistakes to Avoid 101 not to do, ever: Ask a question in cross-examination to which you do not know the answer.
Kathryn, help me out here, counselor: Are there not laws on the books against threatening violence against another? Against intimidation? I seem to recall that there are, but am drawing a blank on the terminology, which hampers me in Googling it.
Anyway, it seems that your cross-burning, with its implied threat of violence, would seem an apt instance for applying such law — along with prosecuting for trespassing, property damage and the like. Just as, in the dog-poop case, one might be charged with harassment (again, I lack the terminology) in addition to vandalism.
Am I right about this? In any case, an act of implied violence meant to intimidate should indeed be something prosecutable, if it isn’t already.
But leave the political views out of it. And certainly, no “hate crimes,” thanks.
Do you see my point? It’s legitimate for a threat to be illegal, but not to outlaw a threat BECAUSE of the world view it reflects. The first is sensible, the latter Orwellian.
A battery is a reasonable perception of a threat of imminent assault. I don’t think there’s more than that–there has to be a pretty proximate threat, not a chilling effect.
I see your point, but the threatening is so very effective and subtle because of the particulars. It’s kind of why they had to go with RICO to try to nab the mob–you can’t catch them in a real crime, so you have to show a pattern of intimidation, etc. It’s a very complex and probably overly broad statute–RICO–and was used against all sorts of nonmobsters in the late 80s and 90s for crimes like tax evasion…
“terroristic threatening”
Krystalnacht. Who would be intimidated by some window glass breaking? Now. What is more Orwellian? I don’t have an answer but I didn’t ask the question.
Threatening (or injuring/killing) an individual for particular circumstances is different than threatening an individual to set an example for the rest of them. That is the point. Call it Terror. Would that make the pill easier to swallow? You may be allowing for far more Orwell in the name of one than the other.
@Burl–right on! The same rules ought to apply for “terrists” of the “raghead” variety and “terrists” of the baseball cap variety and “terrists” of the gangsta/gangster variety.
The problem is always how to punish ordinarily legal behavior, or merely minor misdemeanor behavior within a free society, simply because of the expected outcome or the intent behind it.