10 Truths About Hate Crimes

Coral Ridge Ministries

Dr. D. James Kennedy, Founder

From the 10 Truths Series

TRUTH # 6 Hate Crime Laws Burden the Justice System

It was brutal, but was it “hate?"

Eighteen-year-old Stephen Moller smashed Sean Kennedy’s face with his fist in May 2007, sending Kennedy, 20, onto the pavement outside a Greenville, South Carolina, liquor establishment. Moller, who had been out drinking with friends that night, drove off with his friends, but shortly afterward left a mocking voice mail with a woman who was with Kennedy, “You tell your faggot friend that when he wakes up, he owes me $500 for my broken hand.’”

Kennedy died within a day from the vicious punch, which police initially determined came as “a result of the defendant not liking the sexual identity of the victim.” A police investigator later pieced together the events that led to the assault and testified in court that Mellor found out only after he drove away that his victim was a homosexual.

Kennedy’s mother and homosexual activists reject that conclusion and have called on South Carolina legislators to pass a state hate crime law.

Divining the Mind of the Accused

The lingering and passionate dispute over whether and how much prejudice inflamed Moller’s mind when he threw his fatal blow showcases the burden placed on police by hate crime laws. It’s not enough to find, arrest, and charge the culprit. Much more is required. Police must divine the presence of bias and then determine if enough ugly attitude exists to elevate a garden variety crime into a “hate” offense.

It’s not an easy task. That’s because the entire “hate crimes” concept is hopelessly subjective and “loaded with ambiguity,” as Jacobs and Potter point out. Hate crime laws require law enforcement officials not only to define “prejudice,” but to determine which prejudices are outlawed when linked to a particular crime. Prosecutors must also determine whether a strong enough “causal link” connects the offender’s prejudice with his crime.

How Much Hate Must Be Present?

All this, writes John Leo, “gets courts into a maelstrom…. Why should courts be in the business of judging these misty matters?” Police may be muttering that question to themselves as they try to calculate the hate quotient in a crime. A federal hate crime is defined as an offense “motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.” But “in whole or in part” leaves unanswered the question of how much hate must be present to trigger a hate crime sentence enhancement.

The FBI, in its attempt to give guidance to law enforcement professionals on how to count hate crimes, acknowledges the murky nature of the whole enterprise.

The mere fact that the offender is biased against the victim’s race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and/or ethnicity/national origin does not mean that a hate crime was involved. Rather, the offender’s criminal act must have been motivated, in whole or in part, by his/her bias. Because motivation is subjective, it is difficult to know with certainty whether a crime was the result of the offender’s bias.

The fuzzy and subjective nature of hate crime designations opens the door for interest groups to pressure police as they investigate an offense and determine if it should be labeled a “hate crime.” That labeling decision, Jacobs and Potter write, is “fraught with sensitive, even potentially explosive, social and political ramifications.”

Passions Run High

Passions run high over these matters. A defense attorney complained in 2005 about the “public frenzy” whipped up after six suspects beat a young homosexual man. New Mexico governor Bill Richardson participated in a candlelight vigil for the victim and called for the suspects to be given the maximum penalties possible under the state’s hate crime law. The case, the attorney said, was “being politicized to the point of frenzy.”

When a man described as “black/Hispanic” beat up and hospitalized a Korea-American grocery store owner on Staten Island in 1992, police said it was not a hate crime. That did not sit well with New York’s Human Rights Commissioner, who arrived at the store with media in tow to condemn what he called the “alarming increase in bias incidents on Staten Island.” Staten Island borough president Guy Molinari rejected the charge and asserted that “there is a larger crime being committed with increasing frequency in our city, the crime of fomenting exaggerated fears.”

Public uproar in 1992 over a series of incidents that carried racial overtones, according to many, and even the New York Times reminded its readers that not every attack is motivated by “hate.” The Times took issue with police designation of a robbery as a hate crime and cautioned “everyone—political leaders, the media, the police and the public—to avoid hasty generalizations that make the bad even worse.”

Probing for Bias

But the bad does get worse at trial when prosecutors try to prove the presence of hate. Doing so often requires intrusive questions into the mind and motivation of the offender—questions that under other circumstances would be judged irrelevant to determining the defendant’s actual guilt or innocence.

A San Francisco prosecutor probed in 2004 for bias in a white teenager charged with a hate crime. The 17-year-old boy had joined other young white males in attacking five Asian American teenagers. The prosecutor wanted to know whether the teen had ever used the term “Chinaman.”

He denied saying “Chinaman” that night, but said he has in the past. “I do not know one person who hasn’t said ‘Chinaman,’” he testified under cross-examination. He later clarified: “I’ve said ‘Chinaman,’ but not in a racist form. If you call someone a Frenchman, or Italianman, it’s not offensive.”

That foray into the mind of the teen pales before an Ohio prosecutor’s attempt to show racial bigotry in David Wyant, who was charged in 1989 with an interracial hate offense. The prosecutor wanted to know about his relationship with his black neighbor.

Q: And you lived next door to [a 65-year-old black neighbor of the defendant’s] for nine years and you don’t even know her first name? A: No.

Q: Never had dinner with her? A: No.

Q: Never gone out and had a beer with her? A: No.

Q: Never went to a movie? A: No.

Q: Never invited her to a picnic at your house? A: No.

Q: Never invited her to Alum Creek? A: No. She never invited me nowhere.

Q: You don’t associate with her, do you? A: I talk with her when I can, whenever I see her out.

Q: All these black people that you have described that are your friends, I want you to give me one person, just one who was really a good friend of yours.

Burdening the Justice System

Hate crimes laws are a burden and distraction to the justice system. They divert time, energy, and attention away from “really important things,” as Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter acknowledged when asked about a two-year investigation by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Rights.

After looking into whether a restaurant had transgressed by posting a sign telling patrons to speak English, the commission finally dismissed the complaint, and Nutter was asked if the inquiry had been appropriate. “I think that based on the role and mission of the Human Relations Commission, which is to work on these kinds of issues, it’s appropriate for them to have taken that action,” he said. “At some point in time, we’ll all go back to our lives and try to work on really important things, like lowering the crime rate, getting kids in school, creating jobs and cleaning up the corruption in the city.”

But purging the nation of prejudice comes first, according to social engineers. Doing so, however, pits group against group, and divides America into feuding factions.