Why we need a federal hate-crime law: Exhibit A in rural Pennsylvania
By David Neiwert Thursday May 07, 2009 4:00pm
One of the main features of the running debate over the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act -- which, should it pass, would become the nation's first real federal bias-crimes law -- has been conservatives' insistence on digging up new rationales to oppose it, and then clinging to them intransigently, regardless of how thoroughly their arguments get knocked down.
Thus we get spectacles like Sean Hannity with Steve King, flatly dissembling to a national audience about what the legislation does, how it works legally speaking, and repeating the usual Zombie Lies: "this bill creates thought crimes," "it creates special rights," "it protects sexual perverts," and "all crimes are hate crimes." Or Virginia Foxx informing Congress that Matt Shepard's murder was a "hoax."
That's the brazenly dishonest component of the right-wing opposition. Then there's the only somewhat less dishonest approach of the right's more intellectual corners, which does not stoop to naked falsehoods in the fashion of Hannity et. al., but instead relies on a more legalistic, largely libertarian construct that is opposed to the law on the basis of their general opposition to expanding the reach of federal law -- but clings just as mightily to disproven claims and its own preconceived mythology about bias crimes.
Their reasoning runs roughly thus: The law raises the danger of double jeopardy, while the depth of the hate-crimes problem is wildly overstated by liberal civil-rights groups. There is no problem with enforcement or investigation of these crimes. There is no problem, like we had in the South during the Civil Rights era, with juries refusing, largely on the basis of race, to convict people for bias crimes.
Apparently, these people don't bother to read the news. Because fresh in the national headlines this week is the case of the Shenandoah, Pa., jury that apparently indulged in some very current nullification in the case of the hate-crime beating death of a Latino man named Luis Ramirez.
Indeed, it seems the Justice Department is currently reviewing the case to see if federal charges might be warranted:
Two Pennsylvania teens acquitted of the most serious state charges in the beating death of a Mexican immigrant could still face federal charges.
Justice Department spokesman Alejandro Miyar says the civil rights division is reviewing evidence surrounding last summer's fatal fight between high school football players in Schuylkill County and 25-year-old Luis Ramirez.
This is a tricky issue with the law as currently written, because federal prosecutors would have to find that the killers committed a federal violation in order to act on this case. That would not be nearly the issue if LLEHCPA were already law.
One of the major components of the LLEHCPA, as we recently explored in some detail, is the ability of federal prosecutors to step in and file federal charges in cases like these where the state or local prosecutions fail for whatever reasons.
Now, this is where the conservative intellectuals weigh in, claiming the law raises the specter of double jeopardy. You'll call that this was David Freddoso's objection over at NRO -- to which we responded by citing Frederick Lawrence, dean of the GWU Law School, who explains that this falls easily under the rubric of the doctrine of dual jurisdictions:
[T]here is no constitutional problem here. There is something called the "dual sovereignty doctrine" which permits state and federal prosecutions for the same crime without any issue of double jeopardy as a constitutional matter. This is true generally -- narcotics cases, organized crime cases, official corruption cases, etc. It is precisely to avoid the potential abuse of this constitutional permission that DOJ has its own strict guidelines, limiting their actual use of this authority. Simply put, this is an issue, but not a new issue, and not a hate crimes or a civil rights issue. It is a general criminal law issue under our federal system of government and it is one that has been satisfactorily addressed for decades in practice and policy.
I wrote to Freddoso and gave him a heads-up about the refutation. He responded thus:
... Substantively, I'd just inform you that the argument over dual sovereignty is not a "right wing meme" or a "zombie lie," etc, but a substantive and serious point that civil libertarians on both the left and right debate regularly. I am also told that in order to support this bill, the ACLU had to make an exception to its usual policy of opposing double prosecutions under dual sovereignty. The ACLU is not usually considered a right-wing organization.
Moreover, I seriously doubt you will be able to find any case in real life today where state and local juries are nullifying hate crime prosecutions by unjustly returning "not guilty" verdicts. Nor will you find hate-crime defendants who have been under-sentenced for lack of hate crimes laws.
This bill is a jumped-to conclusion in search of a rationale. Thanks again.
Dave
I responded:
As for your doubts that I “will be able to find any case in real life today where state and local juries are nullifying hate-crime prosecutions by unjustly returning ‘not guilty’ verdicts: You are seemingly quite unaware of the Luis Ramirez case.
In fact, “jury nullification” was exactly how Avery Friedman described this case on CNN.
Indeed, regarding the ACLU's involvement, this is specifically what Caroline Frederickson, Director of the ACLU's Legislative Office, said on a conference call about this legislation last week:
I am here really to address the claims by some opponents of the bill that this bill would chill free speech and chill free association. Well, we strongly disagree with that. This bill has a provision, that has been in it since 2005, that has enabled the ACLU to support this legislation, because it does protect both civil rights and free speech and association. The bill specifically blocks evidence of speech and association that are not directly related to the crime.
That means that anyone saying we have unleashed the thought police, or thought crimes, is wrong.
... This bill will have the strongest protection against the misuse of a person’s free speech that Congress has enacted in the entire federal criminal code.
Yesterday on a conference call about the Luis Ramirez case, Henry Solano of the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF) said:
This is exactly the kind of situation where, if the interest are not met in terms of law enforcement and prosecution at one level of government, there's another level of government that has the right and responsibility to review and determine whether or not subsequent charges should be brought.
Added John Amaya, a D.C. attorney for MALDEF:
What we've seen here in Shenandoah has really given this bill some legs, because now it's something tangible that people can see and people can feel, and talk about the need, the dire need, to push forward this kind of legislation.
Freddoso is also profoundly wrong when he claims that "Nor will you find hate-crime defendants who have been under-sentenced for lack of hate crimes laws." Quite the opposite is true -- not just in the seven states that have no bias-crime laws, but in much of rural America, where bias crimes routinely go unreported, uninvestigated, and unprosecuted:
[W]hat closer examination -- particularly the Department of Justice study [titled "Improving the Quality and Accuracy of Hate Crime Reporting, conducted by the Justice Research and Statistics Association released and coauthored by Northeastern University's Center for Criminal Justice Policy Research] -- revealed was a reporting system that was deeply flawed, with statistics distorted by widespread failures to report the crimes and moreover, confusion about the differences between the absence of a report and the active reporting of zero hate crimes. The DOJ study, which surveyed 2,657 law-enforcement agencies, reported a "major information gap" in the data: It estimated that some 37 percent of the agencies that did not submit reports nevertheless had at least one hate crime. Worse yet, roughly 31 percent of the agencies that reported zero hate crimes did, in fact, have at least one; about 6,000 law-enforcement agencies (or one-third of the total of participants) likely dealt with at least one unreported bias crime. All told, the Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that the total number of hate crimes committed annually in America is closer to 50,000 than the 8,000 found in statistics.
... [T]he underreportage problem becomes acute with people who have reasons not to go to police, including gay men. This occurs on a massive scale in Latino and other immigrant communities, where even legal immigrants are reluctant to contact police out of fear of being deported.
Of all the factors that cause law-enforcement officers to fail to identify and investigate bias crimes, the most significant, the DOJ study's authors found, was the gap between the victims and the police. The less trust that exists between minorities and their local law enforcement, the greater the likelihood that hate crimes will go unresolved.
... Other studies have likewise observed that the most common cause of this cascade of crime is the failure of police to proactively bridge the gap between themselves and the victims. The JRSA's Joan Weiss, in earlier research, found that the reluctance of victims to report crimes was significantly higher for hate crimes than for other crimes. The DOJ study reiterates this point: "For a multitude of reasons, hate crime victims are a population that is leery of reporting crimes -- bias or otherwise -- to law enforcement agencies."
Most hate-crime victims are minorities in the communities where the crimes occur. In many cases, they have poor English skills and have difficulty asking for assistance; in others, they may simply be unaware that what has happened to them is a serious crime. This is particularly true for immigrants, who may be reluctant to even contact police because of their experience with law enforcement in their homelands, where corruption and indifference to such crimes are not uncommon. Likewise, hate-crime victims may be confused about or unaware of the bias motivation involved, interpreting a threat or assault as a random act when other evidence suggests it was not. At other times, they may be reluctant to tell police about the bias aspects of the acts against them, fearing the police won't believe them or that they simply won't do anything about it anyway. And in the case of gays and lesbians, many are reluctant to report the crimes out of fear they will be forced to reveal their own identities as homosexuals; many more fear (sometimes with good reason) that they will wind up being humiliated and victimized further by police.
Likewise, many minorities in certain communities -- blacks in the South or Hispanics in the Southwest, for example -- have long histories of built-up distrust of law enforcement in their communities, and may simply refuse to participate in an investigation without proactive efforts on the part of police to bridge that gap. Indeed, this level of involvement was almost unanimously the chief factor reported by advocacy groups when queried by the authors of the DOJ study about what most affected hate-crime victims' decision to call or cooperate with police.
Hate-crimes laws are "a jumped-to conclusion in search of a rationale"? Perhaps David Freddoso and his colleagues should take a gander in that looking glass.
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If you want to help gain justice for Luis Ramirez, MALDEF has a petition you can sign urging Attorney General Eric Holder to take appropriate action. America's Voice has a version of it too.
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I wonder if we will ever be a civilized society?
or so.
but I think your right. Hate Mexicans, hate gays, hate arabs, just beacuse. This is what reight keeps teaching the children. All in the name of culture wars. Hey, you have to have a war, don't ya?
........... we won't be any kind of society.
Do you really think the human race will last that long?
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We'll still be around (not you and I), but things will be very different. America will be just another 2-bit country, indistinguishable from the rest. You're getting there pretty quick now.
We could hope for an alien intervention, but they'd probably wipe us out: some inferior life form; pond scum.
...this is one of the reasons why I got out of some of the progressive organizations I used to be in. Some of you are so filled with a sense of self loathing at humanity that you almost seem to want the human race to be obliterated in some fantastic fashion. Or at the very least, you think we deserve it. This makes you little different from the religious zealots who are waiting for the end of the world so all the "non-believers" around them will finally be taught the lesson they so rightly deserve, at least in their view.
You guys really need to cut this crap out completely. It's not constructive, it's not insightful (outside of being insightful into your own aforementioned sense of self loathing) and it's a huge turn off to the majority of people.
And thank you for leaving "progressive organizations"(they probably kicked your race hate apologizing dumbass out). Good riddance and don't fucking come back.
how quite a few of the liberals and progressives, automatically assume that someone is a "race hating apologizing dumbass" when someone doesn't agree with your views or points out hypocrisy in them. Do you have any reason to believe that eqfan is a race hating apologist? Other than what he has posted here?
Rome began as an idyllic Republic. It grew larger, conquered others, took their stuff and enslaved them. Then it became a dictatorship, once the greed and rot had set in with the Senate and the bankers. It was all downhill from there. The barbarians got it in the end.
I'm pretty sure history will repeat: the corruption starts inside.
for the most part. Which is why the founding fathers tried to limit the powers of govt (in part) and they also realized the problems with a straight democracy. One can lead to tyranny by the minority, the other can lead to tyranny by the majority and tried to balance them. The split congress is a example of this, they have the senate where each state has a equal number of votes no matter on population (to prevent tyranny by the states with the larger populations) and the house where votes are dependent on population (to prevent tyranny by the states with small populations) and restricted the powers of them by the constitution.
civilization isn't as great as you think it is.
It's not as CIVILIZED as we would like to think.
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The rulers could not rule us if we didn't have others to hate
So everyone getting along (civilized) will never happen
I fully support a federal hate-crimes bill, but I do get somewhat concerned about the possibilities of double-jeopardy. I realize that it may well be considered acceptable under the dual sovereignty doctrine, which is controlled under "strict DOJ guidelines."
I'm afraid that the law, as written, could too easily be abused under those "strict" guidelines under a less-than-strict DOJ.
Wouldn't the law be just as effective if it were written so as to avoid double jeopardy? A federal prosecution can supersede a state or local prosecution, rather than be concurrent with it.
One of the hopes all this change in Washington was supposed to bring was dialogue and debate. So far I think we've fallen a little short. Look, the rationale for hate crime legislation is strong. The crimes are heinous and the government wants to assert formidable resources in prosecuting alleged perpetrators. That is both conceded and wholeheartedly agreed with. Now, we need to get down to figuring out how, if, or should legislation be passed to address this problem. The argument against double jeopardy is dual sovereignty. But just because dual sovereignty exists does not mean it exists sufficiently. For instance, consider a scenario where a state jury absolves a defendant based on an alibi that he was not present at a crime scene. A federal jury decides the defendant was present. That is a big problem in judicial process. In civil cases it would be absolutely prohibited by res judicata and collateral estoppel. Bedrock traditions of legal process and for good reason. They are concepts, even if not applied in criminal law, which should be considered. Now take it a step further, what if a federal judge does not allow in evidence that which a state judge had allowed in and which was exculpatory. That too is problematic. At the end of the day, two trials means two sets of facts, two sets of findings, and two sets of evidence. The rationalizations minimizing this reality and their dangers should be reconsidered and argued more thoughtfully. While I support hate crime legislation, I don't support it until I know how these questions are resolved. To me, one trial seems to be the obvious answer. The doj, a special unit, should be assigned to prosecute hate crimes and at the same time to prosecute the state charges. This accomplishes the policy goal and at the same time seems consistent with judicial tradition, etc.
Finally, where is a defendant supposed to get the money to wage all of these defenses in all of these cases? If the state and feds are armed with additional resources, shouldn't we also try and protect the defendant with adequate resources?
I was going to write something similar, but jasonb said it better.
of this nature. That's a pretty radical approach and is interesting!
That's probably something to avoid. However, state issues can be decided in federal court. Civil rights claims can also be decided in state court under a state's constitution. So I think the adjudication of a case can be pretty flexible in this regard. There are seemingly lots of ways to approach this but just for the sake of nor being too radical maybe we should try and accommodate a state's interest in prosecuting crimes.
with the legislation if they restricted the use of it to one and only one of the four reasons they list and that would be (B) the State has requested that the Federal Government assume jurisdiction
ETA and only if the state chose for them to do so, if the state chose not to prosecute locally.
is that they know the looney states' juries will set anybody free for causing violence or death of minorities and they don't want the Feds to step in to right the injustices they know are committed (but they can't intellectualize the injustice nature of murderous acts caused by whites against persons of color, ethnicity or sexual orientation because they routinely dehumanize non-whites or gays)
I actually feel sorry for you. You can't see past your own race. You show your bigotry in numerous ways, from the above post "injustice nature of murderous acts caused by whites" what about acts caused by "people of color" against whites?. I'm white and have been a victim (or attempted victim) of hate crimes and I don't want to see this legislation pass, and not because in a few instances the jury will come back with a faulty (in my opinion) verdict. I don't like the legislation because of constitutional reasons and as others have mentioned the financial burden it can place on defendants to fight repeated trials also because we have more than enough laws in place to deal with any of the crimes it covers.
It's hard and this ruling is an embarrassment to my state but you have to realize Pennsylvania is two states. You have your cities (Pitt, Philly, Scranton and Erie) and then you have the rest of the state. A bunch of redneck freaks. Just look at our voting record. We vote Democratic most of the time. It's these freaks in the outlining communities. I can drive 13 miles away from the city and you're dealing with a culture who thinks Beck and Limbaugh are gods. But the population in this state is concentrated around the cities with the educated people. Most of us people in this state believe that kicking a man in the head to death is nothing less than murder. But you go into the bible belt it's considered simple assault and weeding out the undesirables.
if it means charging the black mugger who say's fu whitey while he relieves you of your cash and beats your head in. That'll be the day.
Well, if you can establish in court that he committed the crime because of a racial animus toward whites and selected you because you were white, then you'd have a case. Because that's the level of evidence you need to have to prove up a case against anyone who commits a bias crime.
And what do you know? In 2007 alone, the FBI reports that there were 749 anti-white hate crimes tabulated under their statistical method-gathering, with 871 offenses, 908 victims, and 828 offenders. (The FBI does not tabulate prosecutions, but typically the prosecution rate in bias crimes is at around 60 percent.)
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts05072009.html
I've been relieved of my belongings by white guys, but never black guys. Of course, that was the prevailing stereotype you are brought up with in white suburbia. "Watch out for them black people."
...is not a stereotype. It's a sad, simple fact. I'm a white person, but I've worked on several political campaigns for 3rd party black candidates which involved a lot of going door to door in primarily black neighborhoods.
I can recall one event that stands out in particular. I was with the candidate himself and we were collecting signatures outside of a grocery store. A gentleman came up to speak with the candidate, and the conversation went like this:
Gentleman: Are you for white people?
Candidate: No...I'm for everyone.
Gentleman: *pointing at me* What about him?
Candidate: He's good.
Gentleman: Are you sure?
The gentleman regarded me as someone would regard a dog that may bite them more than as a person.
Mind you, this is not to say that I think this person would have done harm to me or gone out of his way to commit a crime against me. Simply that I don't think he would have urinated on me if I were on fire.
The sad fact is that there's plenty of hate to go around in our country and in this world, and no one "race" has the market cornered on it.
Or at least has been attempted. Does this fit "White boy you in the wrong place" followed by a attempted assault. Or nothing I heard said, going into a bar in a majority black neighborhood having a couple of drinks and getting dirty looks, and when leaving have three of the patrons meet me in the parking lot one of which had a bat? And I don't think it was because anything I said in the bar, I had two beers and didn't discuss anything other than the weather and the bears chances (I'm pro chicago bears).
that its the same year that made murder or attempted murder illegal.
Hate crimes are unconsitution since they imply that everyone is not equal under the law.
..the desire for hate crime legislation is so that criminals and predators who act with an agenda of hate on a specific individual because of who they are or what they believe, white, black, gay, straight, minor, married, TV talk show host, Worker, Unemployed, religious, atheist, etc. When a hate Crime is committed, it is directed at like individuals in the community and/or nation. The legislation takes them to task for their hate of any group of people.
Read the law and don't listen to talk show hosts that want you to be afraid of shadows.
as americans we r a diverse bunch...and ive come to accept that among us there r racists... i dont like it and it that behaviour sickens me but its fact... thats what they r taught and unless a reeducation process ensues they will continue to hate others for being different...im not sure there is a solution to this problem...i wish there were.
There is no need for MORE LEGISLATION. There are already statutes against murder, covering all aspects of this hideous crime. It does enter the realm of thought-crime, because as we all know, government power increases and the scope of the initial law may expand as well.
I have no idea why these two were not found guilty of murder, but I have not been following the case. As with Matthew Shepard and other victims, existing laws can be employed to bring justice for the crime committed.
Hate crimes are especially vicious and obscene. They really do fall into a special category - and I believe should be prosecuted as such.
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An acquaintance - a friend of a friend of ours - murdered his wife thirty years ago or so. He walked into the bathroom where she was bathing and stabbed her to death in the tub. Then he went to the phone and called the police. He spent 11 years in jail (out early for good behavior) and has been rebuilding his life in the 15 or so years since. Having met him at parties and other social get-togethers before he murdered his wife - my husband and I made the conscious decision that if he called us after his release - we would tell him we did not want to see him. We had small children - it seemed unnecessarily risky. And we could not forgive him for killing that lovely girl.
Two months ago, he killed his current wife, her high school-aged son by a previous marriage, and then himself. Many that knew him found themselves heaving a great sigh of relief. It was over. The waiting for this man to kill again -- was over.
Now that these boys have gotten away with murder - do the people in their community really think they're done killing?
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There quite a few myths about hate crime laws. Here are just a few:
1) They criminalize thought.
Answer - no, the thought itself is never a crime. There can be no hate crime in the absence of a physical crime. Hate crime laws only criminalize acting on certain thoughts - as do nearly ALL felony laws. The difference between involuntary manslaughter and Murder is state of mind. In fact, if there is no criminal intent - no mens rea - there is often no crime at all.
2) Hate crime laws create double jeopardy.
Answer - no, they define the separate crime committed against parties other than just the direct victim of the act. Hate crimes victims are selected because of their membership (or the belief that they are members) of an identifiable group that the assailants wish to punish or threaten. Hate crimes "send a message" to other members of that group. Hate crimes are by definition "terrorism" because they are intended to create terror in a group of people other than just the direct victim.
Spray painting "Kilroy was here" on your Jewish neighbor's door is misdemeanor vandalism. Spray painting a swastika is terrorism. Intent is an essential element of felony crime.
3)Passing a federal hate crime law would improperly take jurisdiction away from state and local authorities.
Answer - a federal law adds teeth to state and local investigations, and can make federal resources available to local authorities to resolve crimes they have been unable to properly pursue due to lack of manpower, funding or other resources. Federal "bigfooting" would only be necessary when local law enforcement is unable or unwilling to fulfill its obligations.
An interesting interpretation of existing law suggests that a de-facto federal hate crime law already exists under the current Patriot Act. It's definition of domestic terrorism includes: "activities that are "dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State" and are intended to "intimidate or coerce a civilian population." What is lacking is the provisions to assist and accommodate local law enforcement.
Spray painting a swastika is a good example of a thought crime. To state that this vandalism is more than a misdemeanor is to suggest that the perp wanted to do something more than deface property.
If you start expanding the victim list of the crime to include others not even in the same physical location, that is where I have a problem. You have a perp, you have a victim. To go beyond that allows the scope of such laws to expand without limit.
We just emerged from eight years of unrelenting attacks by Republicans on core constitutional principles and due process guarantees going back to the Magna Carta. Now that the Democrats are in charge, they pick up seamlessly from the Republicans by pushing "hate crimes" laws that continue that assault, albeit from a different vector.
Not being on intimate terms with the details of the case in Pennsylvania, I can only offer an opinion about the merits -- such as they are -- of the verdict. Yes, it looks like race-based nullification to me (as it happens, I'm Latino), but so did the Simpson verdict -- anybody remember that? Why wasn't O.J. subjected to a "dual sovereignty" hate crime prosecution, as were Officer Stacy Koon and the others involved in the beating of Rodney King after their acquittal?
Tearing away the gauze of sophistry in which it's swaddled, "dual sovereignty" is substantively indistinguishable from double jeopardy.
And as long as we're acknowledging that states and the federal government are supposed to be separate sovereignties -- something liberals are generally loathe to admit -- it's important to dust off Federalist #45 in which Madison, the primary author of the Constitution, explains that the "few and defined" powers of the federal government do not include a general police power (as the Lopez ruling reminded us a few years ago). The
By way of contrast, the "numerous and indefinite" powers reserved to the states "extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people" as well as matters of "internal order" -- that is, police power dealing with the protection of life, limb, and property.
There are many sound reasons why states shouldn't enact hate crimes laws, but they're constitutionally free to do so. This federal measure, on the other hand, is facially incompatible with the assignment of powers described by Madison and required by the 10th Amendment precisely because it would permit federal intervention in criminal matters that fall entirely within the innate jurisdiction of the states.
The jurisdictional arrangement can be changed, of course -- through a constitutional amendment. If the hate crimes measure is passed and enacted into "law" (I use the mock quotes deliberately, since spurious enactments aren't legitimate laws), I earnestly hope it is nullified by the state governments. So should all supporters of authentic federalism.
One last item deserves mention: As CounterPunch and Mother Jones (as I recall) have both documented, the so-called Southern Poverty Law Center is not a source of objective social analysis; it is an immensely profitable racket run by one of the most egregiously self-serving figures in recent political history.
Morris Dees and his employees, whose livelihood depends on a never-diminishing "crisis" of ethnic "hate," have every reason to inflate the threat. So it surprises me not at all that Dees and company would multiply "hate crimes" estimates by more than a factor of five.
For someone who seems to prize rational argument (and most of this post is as good an objection to a federal bias-crime law as I've seen), you sure seem eager and willing to adopt an ad hominem argument when it suits you.
Having worked off and on with the SPLC over the years, I can tell you that the complaints about its fundraising prowess and the skillful use of PR are not without merit. However, my main criteria over the years has been the accuracy and usefulness of their information. And they've been consistently very good and very sound over the years. I've fact-checked and double-checked probably a hundred different bits of information from the SPLC over the years, and their track record is in the A-minus range.
On that note, I should add that I've actually interviewed the authors of the DOJ study who first raised the issue of underreportage, and they told me that the SPLC figures likely were, if anything, conservative.
And a P.S. As a former resident of northern Idaho and someone who worked hard for many years to deal with and combat the presence of the Aryan Nations in our midst, I do have a very different perspective on whether or not its work is a "scam." Because it was the SPLC that finally put them out of business.
Perhaps you will give us a good libertarian reason why that was a horrible thing for them to do.
It's not an "ad hominem" argument to underscore problems with the credibility and motives of a supposed expert, especially one who has as much influence on a critical matter of public policy as Mr. Dees has regarding "hate crimes" legislation.
As a matter of principle, I don't object to anyone making an honest profit. I do think people with something to sell aren't particularly objective about the merits of their product. Mr. Dees' "solution selling" demands that there be a large and preferably expanding "problem" of hate groups and hate crimes.
The SPLC did not become the "wealthiest civil rights group" in the United States by putting hate groups out of business, or by low-balling the supposed threat. And the same is obviously true of those whose livelihood is connected to the same perceived threat.
The Aryan Nations -- a squalid little clique I'm familiar with, since I've lived most of my life in Idaho (where I currently reside) -- actually offers a very useful illustration. Ten years ago the FBI, regurgitating nonsense it was spoonfed by the SPLC, was warning that Richard Butler's putrid little cult was threatening to "seize" five states to build an "Aryan Homeland."
Is there anybody blessed with a particle of common sense who really believes that this could have ever happened?
The AN's influence persists in Northern Idaho to this day like a deeply infused stench in an otherwise lovely fabric. And its dozen or so offshoots struggle for existence in various parts of the country, no doubt helping to plump up the "hate group" statistics on which SPLC fundraising relies.
And in terms of the real threat to life, limb, and property, members of minority groups (if we insist on collective designations of this kind) face much greater danger from urban violence and bad schools than they do from any of the marginal hate grouplets on which Dees focuses his attention.
It seems to me that Dees and his group are the mirror-image of self-designated "militia" leaders who -- with more confidence than competence -- publish maps displaying the locations of "UN troops" in America, or of the neo-con keyboard warriors who publish similarly reliable guides to "jihadist" cells.
In my own experience reporting on Klansmen and neo-Nazis, I've been struck by how often the same groups depicted as fearsome stormtroopers are pathetic little clubs composed of cretinous adolescents, toothless elders of both sexes, and a handful of gelatinous middle-aged men one barbecue binge away from a coronary.
Nitwits of that variety will always be with us, and "hate crimes" laws will probably help, rather than hinder, their recruitment efforts. I'm cynical enough to think that Mr. Dees and other entrepreneurs of racial alarm understand that dynamic, and how to profit from it (to the tune of $14 million or so a year).
As someone who has often been (and occasionally still finds himself)on the receiving end of undisguised racial bigotry, it seems obvious to me that we should strip the pop sociology and ideological special pleading from the issue of law enforcement, and focus on deterring and punishing crimes as such.
You obviously moved to northern Idaho in the relatively recent past. Anyone who lived there in the 1970s and 1980s would not be so blithe, particularly about the usefulness and importance of hate-crime laws.
You've never heard of Father Bill Wassmuth, I suspect, and it's too late for you to know him now. But he was very much my mentor. I'm sure you look down your nose at his work too.
Your loss.
Christ almighty. I'm arguing this with William Grigg, John Bircher extraordinaire.
It's all much clearer now.
BTW, Bill, Payette is considered central Idaho, not northern Idaho. You're a good eight-hour drive from Hayden Lake and Coeur d'Alene -- and I'll bet you have no idea what life was like for people in the Panhandle when not just Rich Butler, but Robbie Matthews and Gary Yarborough and the rest of The Order were doing their thing.
Might I point out, as long as we're talking motives, about your own? About the Birchers' complicity in fomenting the radicalism of people like Butler and his followers? You want to know how many people I interviewed in the Aryan Nations -- as well as in the militias you and The New American helped promote back in the 1990s -- who started out in the JBS? And now you want to minimize them, play them down, and pretend they're not a problem.
Right.
"For someone who seems to prize rational argument (and most of this post is as good an objection to a federal bias-crime law as I've seen), you sure seem eager and willing to adopt an ad hominem argument when it suits you."
Two posts later:
"Christ almighty. I'm arguing this with William Grigg, John Bircher extraordinaire. It's all much clearer now."
This is hypocrisy in hyper-drive, n'est-ce pas?
Under the standard conventions of rhetoric, you're not only arguing with me, but losing badly: You concede the rational soundness of my constitutional argument, even if you don't agree with it, and then proceed to offer unfiltered personal attacks that are either fundamentally ill-informed or deliberately dishonest. Given the overall tenor of your comments, I suspect the latter alternative is the case.
Since you've apparently conceded the constitutional case, I'll address some of the peripheral matters you raise.
First, and most importantly, geography: Yes, I presently live in Payette, but I've previously lived in several other parts of the Gem State. No, I've not lived in the panhandle, but I've spent plenty of time there over the past two decades and know the region and its people and problems very well.
Furthermore, I'm hardly a stranger to racial bigotry, whether organized or inchoate. It's not confined to the skinny part of the state I love, alas.
I was raised in the Mormon Church, the formal tenets of which until quite recently were nearly as racist as anything taught by Butler and his ilk. To this day it's assumed by Mormons of a certain vintage that my brown skin is a mark of divine disfavor. Attitudes of that kind made growing up in Mormon-heavy southeastern Idaho rather interesting.
As it happens, I understand bigotry as someone who's been on the receiving end. And as a matter of principle I maintain, along with (of all people) Felix Frankfurter, that the law's sole proper domain is that dealing with external acts and not the inner life of individuals. Punish criminal acts and leave prejudices alone.
My interest in the JBS was piqued by three things: First, the group's outspoken opposition to the 1991 Iraq war, to which I was passionately opposed as well; second, its fidelity to the Constitution and opposition to foreign entanglements in general; and third, a TNA cover story dealing in depth with the horrible treatment of the American Indians, a subject not many conservative groups or publications would touch.
Yes, there are more than a few ex-Birchers who ended up white supremacist outfits. Many of them spent just long enough in the organization to have a cup of coffee at a chapter meeting before either 1) being asked to leave because of their odious views on racial matters, or 2) leaving in disgust because the JBS, to their disappointment, was not the racist outfit it was dishonestly depicted to be.
In my case, I'm an ex-Bircher (a fact you saw fit to fudge) in large measure because of a dispute that arose a couple of years ago: The current management thought it was more important to cultivate a relationship with the Republican Party's coalition than to defend the Bill of Rights at a time when Bush and his claque were tearing up what little remained of it.
I was urging a more vehement stance in opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, warrantless surveillance, torture, rule by executive decree, and other such charming policies. It was my hope that we could quietly seek common ground on those subjects across ideological and partisan lines.
JBS management wanted to focus exclusively on the "Brown Peril" -- immigration from the south -- because that subject resonated with the increasingly militant nationalist element of the Republican coalition. I couldn't see the logic in collaborating with that element of the population most energetically devoted to policies that were ruining our country. That had a lot to do with JBS management's decision to fire me in October 2006.
So as long as you've decided to make me the issue, blend these considerations into the mix:
I've sacrificed a great deal, in tangible financial terms, for my commitment to the Constitution. And even though I've collided with bigotry in tangible form, protecting the Constitution from malignant innovations like "hate crimes" laws is more important to me than assuaging my disgust and outrage.
I am a die hard liberal and I am adamantly opposed to federal hate crimes legislation.
For those of you who think we absolutely need more federal criminal laws, I invite you to accompany me to watch sentencing proceedings in state court sometime. If you stay for a couple hours, you can watch the judge go through an entire chain gain of inmates handing out prison time like water.
In sentencing hearings, the motive for the crime is always a relevant consideration in aggravation which leads to a longer prison sentence. If a crime is racially motived, that fact is always mentioned by the prosecutor in aggravation and the judge considers that fact when he hands down a sentence. Believe me, elected judges in state court have no compunction with handing down draconian sentences. Anyone who says otherwise has not spent enough time in a courtroom.
The men who killed Matthew Shepard in Wyoming are currently serving sentences of life without parole. The men who dragged the African-American man to death in Texas both got the death penalty. What more do you want? Do you want them to get a second death sentence in federal court?
I don't understand why my liberal friends bitch about draconian federal laws and then turn around and advocate for them. Laws that are passed due to outrage over one criminal case make for terrible legislation. I would rather have outrage over a single case where a criminal defendant did not get convicted of a more serious offense then slowly piss away fundamental constitutional double jeopardy protections and invite the U.S. Attorneys office to get a second crack at everyone who the public doesn't think got reemed hard enough in state court.
It makes me even angrier that you rely upon the voices of the so called legal experts who tell you that the dual sovereignty doctrine permits this under the constitution. Who cares? I've read those cases and I side with Justice Douglas' dissent. Dual sovereignty is fubar. There is no reason why the double jeopardy clause should be construed to allow the federal government to get a second whack at you.
I'm not going to wait for this sorry excuse for a Supreme Court to tell me that the dual sovereignty doctrine is garbage. Your individual rights are not granted to you by unelected judges. You've always had fundamental rights which can never be taken away from you; you just forgot that you had them. And you actually believe the so called legal experts that told you that you never had them to start with.
We need fewer federal laws not more laws. I will always be consistent with this position, even at the expense of being unpopular.
Despite being sick over this ruling and having consistently agreed that we need hate crime legislation, I'm starting have my doubts.
I certainly doubt that, much the way I don't believe the death sentence acts as any deterrent to murder, racists and bigots will be deterred by tougher laws. So is it possible that, while we may feel that certain groups are more likely to be targeted, creating special laws might actually increase discrimination and animosity toward them?
Maybe educating people is actually the best solution to preventing hate crimes.
I don't necessarily disagree with small-government sentiments like this. I'm generally in favor of pulling back on the expansion of federal laws.
I just always find it curious that people want to start here, with these laws. Laws that should have been passed in 1924, when the Senate first allowed Southern Democrats to filibuster the original anti-lynching law to death.
When it comes to law and history, I'm in over my head.
All I know is, I grew up with "Free to be you and me." While it probably didn't prevent racism and bigotry in my hometown, it made me a more responsible parent who teaches my kids to be tolerant of others.
Keep the posts coming, David.
I agree completely with David A. (and I am also a die hard liberal) We should punish behavior because it is criminally punishable - period. I don't want police and prosecuting authorities to be in the business of trying to figure out what was in someone's mind at the time they committed an offense. Some of these ignorant bastards probably do deserve extra time tacked on, but enacting "hate" crime legislation is just going to make the already murky criminal justice system that much murkier.
that is nothing new. Except under special circumstances like "strict liability" there can be no felony without the element of "what was in a person's head" - their mens rea.
If you reject criminal law that relies on "what was in a person's head" you eliminate all forms of murder, and nearly every other felony from the books.
Srikes Again!
I'm not a right winger, I can't stand them. I'm someone who values all human life
My question is, why do we need a specific law for hate crime. Isn't a violent crime a violent crime. Do we really need another law for it. Or is there something else to the hate crime law that I'm missing?
If anyone can explain this I would appreciate it.
It is to keep you from criticizing or questioning your masters
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts05072009.html
Hate-crimes laws are about protecting freedoms -- particularly the freedoms of minorities and those members of society that are victimized by bullies and thugs.
First, to answer your questions about why they exist as a matter of criminal law:
More important, there's the question of why we have them as a society:
Its feel good legislation, they pass a new law to make them feel/look good.
Also gives the Fed gov more power over states, which they keep trying to do, the Constitution specifically limits the Fed powers for what I feel is a good reason. And they continually try to bypass it. Look at the language used in this bill for example "‘(iii) in connection with the conduct described in subparagraph (A), the defendant employs a firearm, explosive or incendiary device, or other weapon that has traveled in interstate or foreign commerce; or" Not that the crime itself violated fed laws, but that the instrument used did. Which is the same as reasoning the feds use for the various federal gun laws. If it at one time crosses (or might cross) any state/country borders we can control it. They regulate instate manufacture and sales of guns the same as they do guns that cross state lines.
Well, the commerce clause is what the federal government uses as its excuse to regulate everything under the sun.
The congress has the constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce. Well, what's interstate commerce? Everything, of course.
Still don't see a good reason for another federal law. Juries are juries. If you want to do away with them, fine. But "hate" crime laws are moronic, period. You don't kill someone if you don't hate them. It is literally as simple as that. As far as "hate" crime laws go, if anything they make it HARDER to convict because you added another element of the crime that has to be proven.
Tell me how this is different from the red necks having an all white jury acquit Klansman for murdering black people in the south?
I say there is no difference.
This is a pack of blood thirsty ignorant hick red necks who murdered a man because he was not one of them. It is racism pure and simple.
Oh yes, the jury was all white peers from their awful little red neck county.
Can we please make this story louder and NAME THE STATE AND PLACE AND KEEP IT UP TO TELL THE WORLD?
Being against an "other" is an important unifying factor for the GOP's base. That is demonstrated by the demographics of the party, which no longer enables it to hold sway over a majority of the country as it once did. Times change. There's a lot of talk about what the GOP has to do to get "back in the saddle." Being more inclusive and tolerant should be near the top of any list.
http://www.pufferfishblog.com/weblog/2009/05/...
Whenever I see Fredrica Whitfield reporting a 'story', I get the feeling that 5 minutes after her shift, she couldn't tell you what 'stories' she reported?
Eh? Must be that Cuntaleezza Rice 'thang'..."intellegence a bonus, but not required".
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