4um: The Case Against Hate-Crime Laws

Title: The Case Against Hate-Crime Laws
Source: LRC
URL Source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff95.html
Published: Aug 18, 2006
Author: Michael S. Rozeff
Post Date: 2006-08-18 20:27:30 by christine
Keywords: None
Views: 3679
Comments: 76

The term "hate crime" is new. The laws against hate crimes are new. Are they a good development or not?

Hate crimes seem superfluous. Why should the traditional crimes such as assault or arson be supplemented by new crimes such as hate-assault and hate-arson? The victim receives the same injuries in either case. If the damages are greater and juries know this, the remedies can be altered accordingly. Why go through the added difficulties of proving that the motivation of the crime was to injure someone because of hatred? Is anything gained beyond labeling the criminal as a person who hated?

Hate crimes carry greater penalties. Hate in and of itself becomes an additional crime when it occurs in conjunction with an ordinary crime. Arson is a crime. The new crime is Hate + Arson. If you intend arson, don’t do it because you hate the person who owns the building. Do it because you like fires or want to collect insurance money. Hatred is deemed punishable whereas liking fires or wanting to collect insurance money fraudulently are not punishable. Does this make sense? Why is hatred special? Why should the law punish hatred?

One theory behind hate crime legislation is that hatred harms others who are not direct victims of the criminal’s crime. There is an externality. If someone paints a swastika on a synagogue, if someone paints a corpse on an abortion clinic, or if someone shoots a Mexican immigrant, all synagogues, all abortion clinics, and all Mexican immigrants are said to be victimized. They are said to be intimidated. The crime is greater, and so the penalty should be greater. That’s the theory.

The state does not have to prove that the crime is greater in the sense of harming many others. It only has to prove that hatred is present. The law automatically assumes that many others have been harmed because it assumes there is an externality. There is no way to prove harm to others because there is no physical injury to them or their property. The extension of the crime to others is supposedly an implication of the fact that it was motivated by hatred.

The externality argument does not hold up. By this theory, an arsonist who sets fires is not presumed to scare other property owners that their property may be next to be burned. A robber who has held up 5 people in a neighborhood, motivated by the desire to get their cash, is not presumed to scare or intimidate anyone else in the neighborhood.

Suppose hatred is the sole motivation of a crime. So what? A crime is a crime as far as the victim is concerned. Its severity is what it is and justice must deal with that fact, no matter what the motivation was. As against this, motivation or similar considerations seem to be important in many areas of law. More accurately, who the perpetrator is and what his background is may shed light on whether the crimes were premeditated or not. If a drunken driver kills a child, the child is just as dead as if a serial killer did the deed. The state’s law distinguishes these crimes. Should it? Should an accident count the same as an intentional crime? Probably not. But while there is no guilty mind (no intent or no malice aforethought) in a drunk driver who kills, there is severe damage, as bad as it can get, and justice has to consider both. These cases are not easy. Perhaps the best answer is to let the jury decide the remedies. Don’t let legislators tie the hands of jurors.

Are these situations analogous to hate crimes? Suppose two arsons are premeditated. The motive for one is psychological gratification and the motive for the other is hatred. It seems impossible to argue for a hate-arson and not a gratification-arson. This means that defining a crime by motivation is a false distinction or one that lacks generality and consistency. It would seem that what is done in other areas of the law to examine intent does not apply to hate crimes. Intent and motivation are two different things.

There are quite a few other reasons to be skeptical of hate laws. (1) Proving that hatred is a motivation is costly and difficult. (2) Attributing motivation to a specific emotion can be quite subjective. It allows a jury or a judge to penalize criminals on subjective grounds. This can be a source of injustice. (3) Harm to others than the actual victim is not actually proven. It is presumed, and the criminal is punished for this unproven crime. This is unjust. (4) The externality theory is faulty because all sorts of crimes may intimidate non-victims or potential victims. If people are to be punished using a theory of crime, that theory should be broad enough and accurate enough to be fair over all similar cases. (5) Restitution to victims is typically disregarded by our criminal justice system. Hate crime legislation continues this feature. It adds to it by focusing on added penalties. (6) Over time, as laws and cases multiply, people can eventually be accused of libelous or seditious hate crimes involving vehement speech when they are biased against a group or merely do not like it or its policies. People can eventually be accused of hate crimes when they use hateful speech. Hate crimes laws are a seed that can sprout in new directions. (7) Perhaps hatred as a motivation will eventually be used as grounds for letting the criminal off the hook. Some clever lawyer will argue that the person’s hatred was uncontrollable or instilled by forces beyond his control.

I’d add that there is no limit to the number of human groupings one can think of by characteristics. At present some groups are covered by hate crime laws and others are not. This unequal treatment of the law will predictably generate pressure for extension of hate laws to more and more groups. Even now, hate laws can be very broadly written so that the hatred is directed against people who vary by such characteristics as race, sexual preference, religion, ethnic group, marital status, political ideology, age, and parental status.

Hate laws are a veritable Pandora’s Box. They can be used to tack on additional penalties or to gain leverage over suspects by threatening additional charges of "hate." It is rather easy to fake the appearance of a hate crime, apparently to gain sympathy for one’s group. The number of these incidents is on the rise. Should a columnist write a vitriolic essay against some figure, he might face not only libel charges but also hate crimes charges. Should someone make an obscene gesture toward someone else, the results may be hate crime charges. In one case in Philadelphia, Christians who were preaching to homosexuals at an outdoor homosexual event were arrested under the Pennsylvania hate crimes law. Suppose that Mel Gibson had taken a swipe at an officer, or suppose an officer had said that he had taken a swipe at him. This combined with Gibson’s remarks would have landed him in an even deeper hate-crime mess.

Suppose that Lew Rockwell, like Murray N. Rothbard, writes that he hates Max Lerner, or that he hates the state, which Rothbard also wrote. What if some enthusiast burns down Lerner’s house in a hate crime? With the existing crazy laws in which responsibility falls upon distant parties, Rockwell may be accused of complicity in a hate crime. Or suppose the state begins to use conspiracy theories combined with hate crime laws. He may be accused of conspiracy to create a hate crime.

The externality theory is simply a clever rationalization. It doesn’t explain why we have hate crime laws because it is clearly a flawed theory. I hypothesize that hate crime laws are in good measure politically motivated. In my theory, power and political considerations explain the laws. There are many avenues for political factors. (1) Some groups feel better having these laws on the books. (2) Leaders of these groups benefit by pointing to these laws as some sort of accomplishment. Their standing as leaders rises. (3) These laws are a way of cementing a group politically and raising its overall influence on other laws and lawmakers. (4) If a gay group obtains legislation favoring gay marriage, this can cause more crime against gays. This in turn raises their demand for protection in the form of hate crime laws. (5) Hate crime laws become part of an overall political agenda. Homosexual and racial groups or their leaders, for example, will push for these laws to attain and cement political power both within their groups and over legislators who respond to voting blocs.

Under this theory, when pro-abortionists, Jews, the aged, Catholics, or some other groups get around to it, and some already have, they’ll seek these types of laws too. Legislators who are entrepreneurial and looking for voting blocs to support them will pander to blocs by proposing hate crimes laws that single out these groups. The political process is a two-way street.

Hate laws are a patch. They do not really reform the law in favor of the victim as they pretend to. If groups that have problems want real and lasting remedies, they have to go about it in a different way than by hate laws. For example, if gays wish to marry, the long-term solution is to get the state out of the marriage business. Failing this, if the state confers tax or economic privileges on married people and won’t recognize gay marriage, then the solution is to push for civil unions that give couples the same privileges. Or perhaps smart lawyers can dream up contracts that create units with tax privileges. If any group is faced with hatred, it is extremely doubtful that hate crime laws will ameliorate the problem. Most hatred is not manifested by outright crimes. Such laws will not stop speech. But they are clearly a move in that improper direction.

Hate laws are not socially healthy. Hate laws institutionalize society’s divisions. They perpetuate the faulty system by which pressure groups obtain special interest legislation. They build upon faulty legal theories, and we surely do not need more of those. They exacerbate society’s ever-present divisions. They have a host of problems and potential downsides.

The criminal justice system is already an under-performing segment of our society, and hate crime laws promise to drag it and society down further.

All Americans have a stake in an effective response to violent bigotry. Hate crimes demand a priority response because of their special emotional and psychological impact on the victim and the victim's community. The damage done by hate crimes cannot be measured solely in terms of physical injury or dollars and cents. Hate crimes may effectively intimidate other members of the victim's community, leaving them feeling isolated, vulnerable and unprotected by the law. By making members of minority communities fearful, angry and suspicious of other groups -- and of the power structure that is supposed to protect them -- these incidents can damage the fabric of our society and fragment communities.

ADL has long been in the forefront of national and state efforts to deter and counteract hate-motivated criminal activity. Hate crime statutes are necessary because the failure to recognize and effectively address this unique type of crime could cause an isolated incident to explode into widespread community tension.

In June 1993, the United States Supreme Court upheld a Wisconsin hate crime statute that was based on model legislation originally drafted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in 1981.¹

¹Wisconsin v. Mitchell,
508 U.S. 476 (1993).

The following year, ADL published a detailed report on hate crimes laws, Hate Crimes Laws: A Comprehensive Guide, which functions as a reference on hate crimes legislation nationwide. This update is meant to complement the 1994 report and encompasses changes that have occurred since that time, including the League's recent addition of gender to its model hate crimes legislation, and the passage of additional Federal legislation, as well as a description of a number of Federal training and education initiatives to confront hate violence.

With all the hatred the jews exhibit towards the goyim, it's a good thing that they're not subject to their own hate-crime laws, lest they'd all be on their way to the gas chamber.

"If there’s another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country."

The ADL was formed as a result of a Jew, one Leo Frank, being charged with murder and rape of a very young girl in Georgia.

One of his high priced lawyers had this to say to the jury during the trial as they were trying to put the blame for the murder on a Negro.....

"Who is Conley? Who was Conley as he used to be and as you have seen him? He was a dirty, filthy, black, drunken, lying nigger. Who was it that made this dirty nigger come up here looking so slick?"

Before anyone gets bent out of shape, the above is a quote from the the trial transcript of the murder of Mary Phagen.

They're also a good way for the government to keep you under their thumb when they can't make a real case against you.

Maybe they could make rape and pederasty a love crime so we have some cosmic balance.

I'm an old-fashioned 2 wrongs don't make a right kind of person. But Dak might agree with you today.

I support hate crime laws, and those that do them deserve the added penalty for bigotry that makes them as bad as child molesters.

After all, they are out to denigrate and molest the human spirit of whatever group they vilify irrationally in their chosen wedge issue, and they deserve to spend as much time as possible behind bars without any benefit of any parole.

But where do you stop? If there were a group of people who hated people with red-hair, should the sentencing for their crimes against red-haired people be greater? Shouldn't the sentencing be based on the intentional damage to victims, not on the strange motivating factors of violent criminals?

Case in point..Most people use and see no harm in the term "white trash". No one has ever gone to jail for using it. Yet this term was coined by the black people of the south as a demeaning and derogatory put down for poor whites that had to work in the cotton fields.

I know there are no groups using red hair as a marker to target to irrationally scare people with to get them to buy into an agenda they otherwise would eschew as with the case with anti-Semitism, or hatred of Negroes to use two common examples yo find with some posters in here.

I don't have any patience for this sort of crap, and see people who suffer from these afflictions of hatred where they act out to victimize others to be any better then people who molest children.

Jerusalem Post

11-07-2004

Headline: Cornell pays tribute to Jew whose 1915 lynching led to founding of ADL
Byline: MICHAEL FREUND
Edition; Daily
Section: News
Page: 04

Sunday, November 7, 2004 -- Nearly nine decades after Leo Frank was summarily executed by a vengeful mob for a crime he did not commit, his undergraduate alma mater has decided to pay tribute to his memory.

At a ceremony held at Cornell University, faculty and students convened to launch a weeklong series of events in honor of Frank, who graduated from the prestigious Ivy League school in 1906. The event was sponsored by Cornell Hillel and several university departments.

Programs include an art exhibit, lectures, and the screening of a film on the Frank case, which burst onto the American scene in 1913 after his arrest in Georgia for the murder of a 13-year-old factory worker, Mary Phagan.

Despite a lack of physical evidence, Frank was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. Scholars have long contended that Frank was a victim of anti-Semitism and that the charges against him were false.

Nevertheless, in August 1915, a lynch party abducted him from the Milledgeville State Prison Farm. After taking Frank to an oak grove outside the town of Marietta, they strung up a noose on a tree and hung him.

Addressing Cornell students last week at the tribute to Frank, author Steve Oney, who recently published a book on the case, said the trial had been replete with "the worst sort of anti-Semitic slurs," including "ancient allegations of sexual perversity against Jews."

He added that in interviews he conducted with the descendants of those who took part in the case, a number of them acknowledged that their forebears had admitted to wrongly targeting Frank.

At the time, the lynching prompted outrage among American Jewry and led to the establishment of the Anti- Defamation League.

In 1986, Frank received a posthumous pardon from the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Jews, as a protected species, are incapable of hatred, or crimes for that matter.

While your motives are pure, your strategy is fataly flawed, since it seems to involve relenqhueshinging personal liberty to authoritarian (think?) tanks or somethng...

As usual they tell only half the story. He was not given a pardon for the crime as you can see from below statement....

" In 1986, Frank received a posthumous pardon from the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles.December 22, 1983 - the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied the motion for a pardon, the reason being that while Alonzo Mann's testimony might incriminate Jim Conley, it did not conclusively prove the innocence of Leo Frank.

March 11, 1986 - the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles finally issued a posthumous pardon to Leo Frank, based on the state's failure to protect him while in custody; it did not officially absolve him of the crime. "

That's gonna be kind of a hard-sell to the thousands of Palistinian & Lebanese families that have lost family members to the genocide.

Ha!!! Censorship by omission, a common MSM ploy. Omit details that damage the desired illusion and then play pretend. Thank god for the net.

Israelis, by virtue of their status as God's Chosen people, are incapable of genocide/crime/hate. You must be mistaken .

The Christian Right's agenda is often framed in general terms as beneficial to 'religion' without specifying Christianity. This is disingenuous because the ultimate beneficiary is supposed to be conservative Christianity and to the detriment of religious minorities - including Judaism. Some Jewish leaders are beginning to recognize this.

“Today we face a better financed, more sophisticated, coordinated, unified, energized and organized coalition of groups in opposition to our policy positions on church-state separation than ever before,” Foxman stated. “Their goal is to implement their Christian worldview. To Christianize America. To save us!”

Foxman said the conservative effort was “not an assault” on Jews as a community, but he warned that Jews “may become... its major victims.” He proposed that Jewish advocacy groups, including ADL, the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress, as well as the major synagogue movements convene in Washington to hash out a common strategy. [...]

In his speech, Foxman cited a new poll commissioned by the ADL as evidence that the Christian groups were intent on imposing what he called “the tyranny of the majority.” According to the survey, which will be released next week, almost 64% of Americans think religion is under attack (57% think Christianity is being assaulted) ... “If 60% think religion is under attack, who do they think is attacking them? Hollywood, the media and the ACLU? And who is behind those three institutions? The Jews, right?” Foxman told reporters after the speech.

In a telephone interview, Foxman said he raised the alarm because he sees a “mood change” nationally in which talk of God and religious values has been replaced with talk of Jesus and Christian values. This Christian “arrogance” is threatening traditional church-state separation in a variety of areas, he said, citing the controversy over Christian proselytizing at the U.S. Air Force Academy and a case recently won by the Salvation Army.

Some Jewish leaders are supporting Foxman while others are skeptical — if not critical. Aside from those who simply disagree with Foxman’s concerns, there are also those who fear what might happen if American Jews alienate the one group they regard as Israel’s biggest ally: American conservative Christianity. This is the one issue which many in the Christian Right also raise:

Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family’s vice president of government and public policy, called Foxman’s speech “perplexing.” Noting that the evangelical groups Foxman cited are staunch supporters of Israel, Minnery told the Forward, “If you keep bullying your friends, pretty soon you won’t have any.”

This is interesting because people like Minnery aren’t arguing that Foxman is wrong (about their agenda to Christianize America) or that Foxman’s concerns are unwarranted (that Christianizing America may cause problems for Jews in America). Instead, Minnery’s response is a thinly veiled argumentum ad baculum — a threat. Minnery is essentially saying that Foxman should stop complaining otherwise his friends won’t be so friendly anymore — not just to him, but to Israel as well.

Let’s also remember why the Christian Right is so friendly to Israel: not because it’s a democracy, or because of the Holocaust, or because they value Judaism as such. No, they are friendly to Israel because they believe that it has an important role to play in Armageddon. The Jews must be preserved so that they can be converted at the end. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

From what I gather (sorry, no "proof"), the Zionist Christian leaders, in editorials in major newspapers, essecially said, "no money to Israel if Christian Zionist attacked."

This was in 1913 and one Jew named Lasker from Chicago sent $100,000 for Franks legal "defense", which menat buying anyone in sight, and they did, trying to pin the rap on any black involved.

One thing ADL and others never mention...There were 12 or more women that worked for Frank that got on the stand and testified he had molested or tried to molest them...His defense lawyers did NOT cross examine a one of them, not one.

By definition the gangster does not recognise a distiction between self defense and self interest.

I can't find a date on this Foxman quote. I did hear on a "lib" radio program this same quote, no date given. Also, the Christian Zionist response. I guess it's 50% confirmed?

I think hate laws are unconstitutional - I'm surprised this hate law crappola inflicted upon us by Clinton has not been challenged in the courts yet.

We are all supposed to be considered equal in the eyes of the law in this country, so why are some groups, some religions, some genders considered more valuable and more in need of extra legal protections? Why are some criminals penalized more for inflicting crimes against aforementioned? Isn't my life, my group, my religion, my gender worth as much as the next American's?

Amazing how they shape history and raise thugs to icon status. But god forbid we challenge their fiction with fact - then out comes the HATE slander. Screw them, I can't ignore reality any longer.

Can you imagine ADL or any other Jew organization printing what Franks lawyers called the black man?????

Never happen. However it is all there in the official transcript which they will never print.

Hell man, I'm not mistaken, I'm still suckin' air. It's all them damn dead people that don't understand the rules.

Exactly why hate-crime laws are such a crappy idea---Tell the truth, go to prison.

If Crime + Hate = Longer Incarceration, doesn't that legitimise the concept of Hate = Incarceration?

No, hate is a product of inferior thinking. Good people simply manage to outmanuever their rivals.

You'd be right to hate me then for suggesting the obscene idea that only the lower classes are capable of hate, but that's what I think I just did. I attempted to lace it with sarcasm, I assure you.

The mere fact that you plugged people into classes is hateful. Read anything by Marx for further details.

Yep, please send me your mailing address and $395,000.00 for S&H, and I'll send you your very own official HATER lapel pin.

"Never has so much military and economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively, and if after all of this time, and all of this sacrifice, and all of this support, there is still no end in sight, then I say the time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership not tied to the mistakes and policies of the past." Richard M. Nixon

Like Neoconservatism and the kosher tax, "hate crimes" are a purely Jewish invention. They're not nor have they ever been part of American law. Sedition, libel, slander and other forms of "illegal" speech have always been part of the picture, but "hate speech" as part of a larger "hate crimes" concept is utterly foreign to American jurisprudence.

Lashon hara has the same gravity in Jewish law as murder does in ours. It's a religious precept of Judaism. Hate crimes/hate speech are ideas that supposedly come from the secular left, yet they're merely rabbinical, Pharisaical Judaism repackaged and shoved down the sheeples' gullets in another form.

Part of lashon hara is what's known as "telling derogatory truths". This would explain why people are prosecuted, fined and/or jailed for "Holocaust denial" and other absurdities as rabbinical law doesn't allow the truth as a defense. "The truth is no defense" as a legal hook has already been established for Germany and other European countries as well as Canada. It's most likely already here in America.

Once upon a time, a subject couldn't speak freely on the topic of his monarch. Those Jews and Noahides that adhere to the idea of lashon hara like a slug sticks to a sidewalk back these "hate crime/hate speech" laws as a method of protecting their King, the Jews themselves.

We can thank B'nai B'rith, the ADL and the SPLC for this state of affairs. They've always been on the front lines of trying to silence, stifle, gag and choke any dissenting opinion on the topic Jewish power in America.

The best defense is to talk a little more loudly. This is still America, dammit, no matter what the commissars think it is.

"We can make a natural alliance through the ownership of the great industries of the world and through the sharing of their profits." -Lord Charles Beresford, in a 1903 speech to the (Anglo-American-Jewish) Pilgrims Society.

Leo Frank was a bisexual pedophile and a drug addict who was constantly sexually harrassing both boys and girls. He raped and strangled Mary Phagan, who was 12, not 13, and got exactly what he deserved. Too bad he didn't suffer more...coal dust was found underneath Phagan's fingernail, showing she was still alive as she was dragged around.

"Benjamin Franklin was shown the new American constitution, and he said, 'I don't like it, but I will vote for it because we need something right now. But this constitution in time will fail, as all such efforts do. And it will fail because of the corruption of the people, in a general sense.' And that is what it has come to now, exactly as Franklin predicted." -- Gore Vidal