8 Comments to 'Getting it straight on hate in the Volunteer State'
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Getting it straight on hate in the Volunteer State
Posted By katie allison granju
There has been a lot of discussion here at Knoxville Talks, and elsewhere in our community about the possible prosecution of the TVUU Church shooting as a “hate crime.” And as WBIR Producer Jake Jost points out, there is also a lot of misunderstanding. He notes:
There’s a few misconceptions here I felt a need to correct.
1) Tennessee does not have a hate crime statute under which one can be charged. Bias motivation is considered an element of the crime itself. It can be a sentencing enhancer but is not a standalone crime. In Tennessee, it can be a bias based on race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin, or disability.
2) The feds can charge you with a hate crime as a separate matter, but it still requires you to do something that’s otherwise a criminal offense. The federal statute is limited to crimes motivated by bias against a person’s race, color, religion, or nation of origin. It’s more narrowly tailored than Tennessee’s statute.
3) Bias motivation is distinct from thoughtcrime in that one can only be charged with a hate crime for actually committing something that’s otherwise a crime. Just thinking it or just saying it in a way that otherwise obeys the law will not get one charged, typically.
4) Hate crime does not create special groups, in that a crime committed out of an anti-white, anti-heterosexual, or anti-Baptist bias motivation would not be any different in the eyes of the law than a crime committed out of an anti-black, anti-homosexual, or anti-Muslim bias motivation.
This is easily observed in the state of Tennessee’s annual report on hate crimes: http://www.tbi.state.tn.us/Info%20Systems%20Div/TIBRS_unit/Publications/2007%20Hate%20Crime%20in%20Tennessee%20.pdf . You’ll see whites and heterosexuals are the targets of crimes motivated by a bias against those groups. Under the theory of “special groups,” that would be impossible.
If you wish to make a claim of selective enforcement/prosecution, that’s another matter–but to say that hate crime legislation creates unequally protected groups by the letter of the law is plainly inaccurate. If you wish to argue that hate crime legislation is unneccessary, insofar as the crime is the problem, rather than the motivation–go right ahead, but to say that motivation and the mental state of one committing a crime is otherwise not considered in court is also absurd.
Everyone is welcome to his own opinion but not his own facts.
Jul 30th, 2008
Hm.
I hereby repudiate my sloppy categorical thinking.
I do think that “bias motivation” is a much more precise and useful term than “hate crime.” But before Jake’s comment, I’d never heard of it.
Thanks for the education, Jake.
The facts say however, that it is the bias that will be prosecuted more fully than the actual crime.
Is that not unequal no matter who the target?
The point Jake, is that our criminal laws deal with action. Murder is punishable by “x” terms, theft by “x” terms, etc.
Hate laws say that it’s not the outcome (whether it be murder by a jealous lover or murder by a gay hater) that we will judge as deserving the fullest prosecution, it is the motive of the criminal.
That’s where we get into the business of elevating one class of victim over another. That’s where you enter the realm of the absurd. You’re basically saying that if you kill just out of plain ole’ rage, you’re not deserving of the extra-heavy penalty that we’re going to give to someone who kills because they “hate” gays, blacks, etc.
Terry,
Hate crime laws are not prosecuted without the presence of another crime. In Tennessee, it’s flat impossible. The statement “the bias …will be prosecuted more fully than the actual crime” indicates maybe you’re not grasping that.
My prior statement: “If you wish to make a claim of selective enforcement/prosecution, that’s another matter–but to say that hate crime legislation creates unequally protected groups by the letter of the law is plainly inaccurate. If you wish to argue that hate crime legislation is unnecessary, insofar as the crime is the problem, rather than the motivation–go right ahead, but to say that motivation and the mental state of one committing a crime is otherwise not considered in court is also absurd.” already addressed the remainder of your comment–even in believing the laws are inappropriate, we must be accurate if we wish to advocate for or against.
Regards,
–Jake, wbir.com
Aw. Jake. Terry is like most right wing, crazed out Republicans who despise the notion of “hate crimes.” When your whole political stump is based on hate of liberals (in one form or another) or perceived liberals (dropping a dime into a blind man’s tin cup) and making villains out of your opposition, they begin to worry about the location of that “threshold” of voice or action that could get them charged with a hate crime. They worry about the line and whether they might step over it without knowing its location. And there’s the rub. You don’t worry about where that line is at all, as our parents used to say, “unless you know you are up to no good to begin with.”
Preachers worry about it too. For example, a preacher might say, “…the Bible says that homosexuality is an abomination before the Lord. That means it’s one of the worst sins that could ever be. Don’t turn on the lights ’cause I don’t wanna see. The Almighty has appointed the death sentence for this heinous crime. God hates fags. God despises them!!! So, congregation, what are we Christians gonna do about it?” However, if a young Jimmy Adkisson is in the pew, he might take that message as an invitation to help the Lord along in his capital punishment activities. All good Christians want to help the Lord. Ease his burden. Show their faithfulness. Transfer mere words to good deeds. You know: “I think I’ll kill me a fag this afternoon—but let’s torture him first like our buddy George W. would.”
But seriously, putting hate speech under the hate crime category does an uncomfortable dance with the First Amendment. I think Terry is right in being uncomfortable there. It makes me a bit uncomfortable too. However, that being the case, how can we limit the harm done by the Julius Streichers and Jim Adkissons among us? Terry? What do you think we should or could do without violating basic rights? Yeah, that’s an olive branch sweetie.
Aulder Guy is the perfect example of why “hate crimes” should not exist. He purports to know exactly why I believe what I believe and why I say what I say. He is 180 degrees off base, yet if he were on a jury, I would be convicted of hating liberals based on *HIS* prejudices and beliefs. Any crime that can result in a conviction (or “sentence enhancement”) based on a juror’s prejudices rather than an objective reading of evidence presents an immediate constitutional problem with the right to due process and the requirement to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
As far as Jake’s “answer”, it is completely non-responsive. Terry correctly pointed out that changing the sentence or adding an additional charge based on the motive for a crime *DOES* create a special class of victims.
Let’s use this example: Two people who live in opposite halves of a duplex are killed - one because the thief wanted his TV set and the other because of some racial/religious hatred. Which of these people is more dead? Which family is more deserving of seeing their killer punished to the fullest extent of the law? Which murder is more wrong? Which one is it more important to deter?
The problem with proponents of legislation that creates these sorts of “bias enhancements” or “hate crimes” (different names for the same thing) is that they never want to directly answer these questions. It’s all hemming and hawing and completely misplaced attacks on those who ask the questions. Why? Because they’re uncomfortable questions, and supporters seem to think that attacking the questioner somehow makes the questions go away. It doesn’t, and they don’t.
When someone can provide me with solid answers to these questions, maybe I’ll rethink my position on the issue. But no one ever has, (and given the tone of the “discussion” thus far on the topic, I doubt there’ll even be a serious attempt to do so here. There seems to be less interest in debate than there is at spewing blind hatred. It would be nice to be proven wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.)
Hi, Jim.
Some of the things you’re asking I can’t answer, because I’m not advocating anything. However, I’ll take you at your word as a gentleman you want answers rather than argument.
Under Tennessee law, a hate crime is a sentence enhancer by bias motivation. Without a crime being committed under another statute, there’s no hate crime possible.
Hate crime sentencing isn’t just a blanket option for jurors to cherry pick. It requires evidence not only of a person’s bias, but of that bias motivating the particular crime.
I suppose I may have missed the point that bias-motivated victims was what Terry and you meant by special groups. I won’t argue for the appropriateness or inappropriateness of such a class, but I will note two things. 1) The laws are not limited to crimes against minorities of any particular stripe 2) We have plenty of special victim classes for actions that are otherwise identical, and we have different classes of crime based on motivation. Attacks on law enforcement officers or politicians are considered differently from attacks on civilians; likewise, first-degree murder is considered differently from second-degree murder.
We have classes of victims against whom crimes are weighed more seriously; we have examples of motivation being considered differently. The argument that consideration of motive and consideration of victim class don’t otherwise happen under the law does not pass muster.
So…I guess the conclusion is that bias-motivated victims could be considered a separate class, but that such a thing has precedent. The point you’d need to make is that it inappropriately creates a separate class.
–Jake.
Aw, Jim. I wouldn’t convict you just because you are a conservative. It matters to me whether you really did the crime or not—not what your politics are. Being a little left wing, I would probably give you at least reasonable benefit of the doubt on the thing. Saddam Hussein. Well. Guilty is guilty. They went too easy on him. He should have been walking around freely in the general prision population where most of the other inmates had at least one relative who had been tortured or killed by him. I may be liberal, but I ain’t that liberal. He got off way too easy.
Also, I am really anxious to read that now famous Jim Adkisson Letter—that 4-pager. It would really be interesting to see what was swirling around in that coconut of his just prior to the shooting. We got some really whacko left and right pups walking around on the streets out there, and we had all better start (as a society) getting our fingers better on the pulse of what these guys are thinking and why.
Jake -
I guess I’m confused as to why my example DOESN’T show that it inappropriately creates a separate class.
The examples you gave of law enforcement officers and politicians are completely different legal animals. We don’t offer greater punishments because of the individual: we offer greater punishments because an attack on one of those individuals is an attack on the rule of law itself - without which our society would cease to exist. I don’t think you’re attempting to argue that our society could survive one of the murders I gave in my example while it would disintegrate in the face of the other, so it’s not particularly “on point.”
The response about first-degree vs. second-degree is completely off-topic. There the difference is pre-meditation, not who they killed so I’m not even sure why you raised it as part of your answer.
The best and truest part of your answer was this:
“Some of the things you’re asking I can’t answer”
And the reason is that NO ONE can answer them. That was the whole point of the exercise.
Yet even without the ability to answer a single one of these questions, those who back “bias enhancements” are saying to the guy who was killed for his TV set:
“Hey, sorry about you being dead and all. That really stinks. But someone taking your life isn’t as bad as taking your neighbor’s life because we looked at the reason you were killed and it just wasn’t good enough for us. I mean, really…It was just a TV set, right?
“Your family can cry out for equal justice for an equal crime all they want, but the bottom line is that we care more about his death than we do about yours.
“So here’s what we’re going to do…We’re going to make sure his killer goes to jail for longer than yours does just to rub it in your family’s face for the next 20 years or so that you just weren’t important enough for anyone else to care about while your neighbor was. I mean, c’mon, he was killed for the ‘right reasons.’ You can’t really be upset about that, can you? Where’s your compassion?
“Too bad you didn’t qualify for one of those ‘bias enhancements’ too, huh? Oh well…Have a nice day!’
You say the burden is on me to show that an “inappropriate” separate class is created. I say to you: I absolutely have already done so.
Just take a few seconds and put yourself on the doorstep of the family of the guy who was killed for his TV set repeating what I wrote above. Are you telling me that you could look them in the eye and NOT feel a burning shame at the injustice of the situation?
I know I couldn’t…