Hate crime laws that do nothing more than add extra penalties to offenders are inherently evil.
If I Assault a man for stepping on my lawn, that's assault and I pay my dues.
if I assault a man because he is this or that race, that's assalt with extra dues.
Why should the exact same crime be punished differently? Assault is assault.
The only thing this law enables is extra punishments on the whim of the state.
Thus evil.
#asknostr #grownostr #debate
Aight.
Criminal law does absolutely pay attention to the mental element of a criminal. (Mens Rea as it is called). Without intention of crime there can be no crime. I mean not metal element is taken into consideration it is an necessity of a crime.
There are already crimes that are distinguished depending on the mental element. Premeditated murder is different than murder (manslaughter) at least carries diff punishment.
Saying assault is assault is like saying theft is theft, whether you stole 5 sats or a heart which was about to be transplanted. You see crime is very dependent on the situation, mental conception and the 'injury' caused to the SOCIETY. Criminal law is law because you have committed crime against not a person but society. Society values the right of the oppressed (here in you eg black person) more that it values your right of property.
P.S the last point is not the main point it is 1 of the point.
Absolutely good points on your thing I had to think quite a lot actually.
That's some fair points.
So, if sociey has a goal, then adding the extra punishments could make sense, but then the law itself is discriminatory by favoring one race over another.
I don't think I gave a great example earlier, I wanted to use premeditated murder since it's clear, but it's also a high crime which may confuse my argument. So here's that example anyway.
Premeditated murder.
Case one, victim is a straight white bartender.
The perp hates bartenders and kills the bartender.
Case two, victim is a homosexual bartender.
The perp hates homosexuals and kills the bartender.
Both premeditated, both targeting by class, yet one has greater penalties.
Furthermore, if the straight bartender's family claims that said bartender was gender fluid, then that elavates it to hate crime status.
Even though the true intent was to murder a bartender.
So we have two issues,
First: how do you avoid extra charges being added to any given crime on a whim by the prosecuter? Except in extreem circumstances, intent cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Second, how is it just if one or more classes of people get a different level of justice than groups of one or more other classes?
I understand your point.
Yes it may seem like prosecutors can add up charges as they want the fact is They do. this is nothing new in legal system. I mean just going into trial with just one crime never happens. Lots of charges are added all the time. The problem is to prove it. As you might have noticed claiming murder of a bartender because he was homosexual is easy hard part is proving it. The more convoluted the crime becomes the more harder it is to prove. That is the check of the justice system. Crime needs to be proven Beyond reasonable doubt. In a jury system convince them that in fact the person has a friend from a high school who is gay or say that killers fav movie is Shawshank redemption because of Morgan freeman and make them doubt even a bit even a little bit of doubt that is enough to make the case go away. Proving a crime is hard and proving hate crime seems even harder.
The second point is very interesting. Again depart from the idea that criminal law is just law because of justice, it is there to even protect society from imploding in itself or to make society better social engineering as it is called. I would not mind a person who killed a dude for personal reason, like he did not like him cuz xyz, be a free man. Which he will be after the period of his sentence. Than to let loose a man who kills people cuz he hates bartenders just hates the idea of a bartending. I mean I may have more interest in second person being locked up more than the first one. I may be a bartender!
Also the crime is also different! One is killing cuz of hate for bartenders one is killing cuz of hate for homosexuals. Society seems to value the rights of homosexual more than that of bartenders. Maybe cuz like 1 group of people were hated by everyone including the law not more than 100 yrs ago. So they value it more.
This is assuming the premise of hate crime being a 'crime'. Hate crime maybe is a different category of crime idk? the hardest is the prove hate crime. I hope they do not lower the standard of burden of proof.
Thanks for the discussion!
Social goals seems the most legit argument to me.
But it seems to me that "hate" crime is basically premeditated crime. So why not be the same for anyone? If we want hate to be a crime, let's not link it to specific groups of people.
Anything that singles people out based on some common mutable or inmutable characteristics does little more than reinforce team mentality.
Had a beautiful discussion about Hate Crimes. Will look forward for more debates and discussion.
