Was Birmingham Sunday, the church bombing in Birmingham in the 60’s where 3 young women were murdered, a hate crime? Absolutely.
This crime was committed, allegedly, by a former KKK member named Glenn Miller. He was a frequent flyer in the white supremacist movement. He will be charged with first degree murder by the state and he will also have some federal charges heaped on him.
What kind of monster does something like this? He can hate who he wants in his head. The minute he acts on that hate, he should go to prison. People living in America should be able to worship how they please without fear of being gunned down or assassinated.
A once proud Green Beret and Vietnam veteran is now shooting unarmed old men, women and children. What a pathetic, vile and cowardly POS Mr Miller is.
I totally agree about your assessment of Mr. Miller.
You have to ask yourself what went wrong in that twisted mind?
This, of course, was a heinous, despicable act. But I have to admit that I have no idea why we have this concept of “hate crimes”. A crime is a crime. If this guy is guilty, he’s guilty of murder. The mess inside his head shouldn’t have much to do with it unless he is so completely insane that he thought he was ordering lemonade, instead of killing innocent people.
Is a crime more heinous if done out of hate? If you run over a man who happens to be gay, is that less of a crime than if you run over a gay man because he is gay?
I do think the concept of hate is important when establishing guilt. I am not sure I can articulate why.
I see the point, Moon, but in your example the hatred goes to motive and intention. The man who hates gays and had been vocal about expressing that would have some evidentiary problems if he tried to pass off the incident as pure accident. What if he runs over someone who is gay, but didn’t know the fellow was gay?
The crime is the crime. If I punch a man in the face without provocation, it’s no more of a crime if I do it because he has blue eyes and I don’t like people with blue eyes.
@Scout
Scout, you and I don’t agree many times.
But in this…..we agree 100%.
I think we are in general agreement, Cargo, on many things. We’re both politically conservative. I just think a lot of what is stuck in people’s heads who self-identify as “conservative” these days is put there by half-baked 25-year old marketeers who are running flim-flam shops and getting paid for it. So I don’t toe the company line on a lot of stuff that seems extraneous or even hostile to a true political conservatism. That puts me at odds with a lot of folks on the blogosphere.
My wariness of hate crimes comes from the idea that the thought itself, without an overt act, would not be a crime under our system. However, when coupled with an overt act the thought becomes an additional weight in the punishment machinery. That concerns me.
A whole lot of things that deal with the criminal justice system or the punishment end of all this bother me.
Punishment continues even when a person has been released from prison. I will never understand why voting rights aren’t restored after release from prison.
I am beginning to doubt the wisdom of not reestablishing the right to bear arms, at least after parole.
If you have served your time, you have served your time. You screw up and commit crime, you go back. When you are out, you are out.
Virginia continues to gouge for the rest of your life.
If I punch a guy because I hate blue eyes the crime only affects me and the fellow punched. The hatred does not affect society. If I punch the guy while yelling “death to blue-eyed white demons” and that outburst is consumed by the crowd and it enrages them, my crime is more damaging to society than if I kept my hatred to myself. In the second case there is reasonable justification to enhance the punishment because the same deed is nonetheless more damaging to a civil society.
Interesting point of view. I think perhaps hate crime charges should make people think twice before inflicting pain or injury or death on a targeted group.
…regarding punishment: often prison time is suspended (to save costs) and that allows a criminal to leave prison early on the condition of good behavior but reduced freedoms such as no voting or owning guns. Although I just gave a rationalization for it, I agree that many of the parole rules seem aimed at scoring political points for being tough on crime rather than attempt to rehabilitate past offenders.
I think if you committed a crime in Virginia after 1996, you aren’t eligible for early release anyway. You are right, Ed, it does seem like scoring political points for being tough on crime. I really believe that once a person has done their time, it should be over. Now, if that person commits further crime, I am all for throwing the book at them but not some of the stupid stuff that is called ‘patrol violation.’
I would say the state does JACK to rehabilitate or try to make people fit back in to society. Its even more difficult to complete college courses when the funds come from private sources.
Don’t get me wrong. I am no bleeding heart for criminals. However, many people in the system are not career criminals. There are people in the system who \have made mistakes, some of them tragic mistakes. However, these people still aren’t what I would call career criminals. Some I have known I would trust with my life, my money, my grandchildren.
I tend to agree that hate rime laws aren’t rational. And don’t do much good. However, I don’t lose any sleep over it because at the end of the day all they are is one more weapon that police and prosecutors can use to arrest and imprison criminals.
If police or lawyers start to tell us how or why these laws are having a deleterious effect on what they do, I’ll get more agitated.
As to crazy hateful people … we’ve got something like 300 million people in this country. Some are going to be off their rockers.
Predictive analysis has been getting a bad name, but there’s something to be said for it. Ideally someone this hateful wouldn’t be able to buy guns.
A hate crime isn’t because the victim was a member of a protected group. A hate crime is a crime in which the perpetrator selected the person to be the victim because of that person’s membership in a protected class (e.g. race, religion, etc.)
So is it a hate crime still if he thinks that the people he is shooting are Jewish and they really aren’t?
Good question, Moon. These things begin to sound like law school exam questions. It’s like these reptilian, wacko, Muslim-haters who murder Sikhs. Their hatred, combined with stupidity, is murderous not just in its intent, but in its unintended consequences.
I suppose if you have “hate crime” laws, you have to give full credit even if the murderers make mistakes. It’s the thought that counts.
Maybe that’s how his trial should open: It’s the thought that counts!
We prosecute people with fake guns as armed robber and with enhanced punishment over ordinary robbers even though the fake guns can’t kill. The thought is that the extra damage done to the victim who rationally and honestly believed the gun was real has already been done and it was equivalent to an armed robbery.
The same logic aught to apply to hate crimes. If one intended all jewish people to be afraid by shooting people one mistakenly thought were jewish, that person is still a jew hater, albeit a stupid one.
Great analogy, Ed.
I doubt the intent is that complex, Ed. I think physical violence crimes against real or perceived members of a hated group are simply eruptions of irrational animal violence against the immediate victim. I doubt that these morons have any thought of ripple effects on other members of the same group. Of course, this is just speculation on my part, but if we define a hate crime as one intended to have additional effects on non-victims of the same hated group, it simply adds to the difficulty of administering laws based on excursions inside the empty and disturbed heads of violent criminals.
I agree that hate crime is not all that complex.
Perhaps it goes to sentencing – hate crime is premeditated vs crime of passion. Degree of guilt is quite a topic.