A Hate Crime

[kimba1]

Afew years go in philidelphia thirty asians students was assualted in a two day the princapal refused acknowledge that only asians are targeted. So despite asian has no protection from that law it's presence will get people to notice they are getting attack. It's funny because in the news video only asians say they are targeted but everybody else only say attacked. Despite no mention any other race was attacked

[Plane]

It is ridiculous to say that intent cannot be taken into consideration in an accusation of murder. Every court in the country takes motivation into account.

That is not quite what I proposed.

When someone has a justified reason , such as self defense , and some evidence of that justifacation then his fault is mitigated.

For a while there you made it sound as if greed might be accepted as justifacation , which I certainly reject.

When there is no discernable or provable motive should the punishment be lighter?

[Xavier_Onassis]

A hate crime murder is a type of premeditated murder. It is hard to justify as  temporary insanity. The hater generally plans to commit the murder on some hated minority member in advance.

I did not say that greed was a justifiable motive, on the contrary, it is a motive for personal gain. It should a more serious moral issue than something done on impulse, like murdering one's wife's lover in the process of screwing one's wife.

An example of an unmotivated murder would be to accidentally run over someone in the street, or in an accident. The driver of the subway train that ran over a person on the tracks should not be prosecuted, since the train cannot be stopped in time no matter what he does.
 

[sirs]

A murder is a murder, whether it was motivated by hate, anger, desperation, financial, mental, etc., and the intent was to kill.  The victim is still dead, and shouldn't be processed as some lower class of dead, based on some arbitrary skin color

The "unmotivated murder" as you're describing is not murder at all, they're accidents, as there was no intent to kill

[Xavier_Onassis]

Exactly.

There are degrees of offense, ranging from totally accidental death to manslaughter due to negligence (like driving while drunk) to justifiable homicide. The differences between these are often a matter of the mental attitude of the person causing the death.
 
Of course, a driver can be drunk and the same accident could also have occurred in some cases even if the driver was totally sober.

Intent is certainly a factor, and premeditation is certainly another.

The usual reason for a federal hate crime law is to assure justice in cases in which the local authorities are negligent in dealing with a crime. The various civil rights murders by Klansmen cops in Mississippi are one example of this. The Feds entered the case based on the undeniable fact that murdering someone is a denial of their civil rights. Note that it took decades before the Feds got involved in this.
The mental attitude of the person causing the death is always a factor in determining any punishment or lack of same.

[Plane]

There is no need to have "hate" as a crime catagory.

Killing is not "murder" if it is entirely accidental or motivated by good cause , such as self defense.

Racism is not a justification of killing and already is unacceptable without "hate crime" laws.

I consider hate crime laws worse than useless ,especially if they make it more important that the killer killed an Arab than that the killer killed a person.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I can see a reason for federal hate crime laws, because local police have on many occasions refused to take on a case in which race has been a factor.

Hate is not a crime category. Hate is a motivation for a type of random killing of strangers based on prejudice.

[sirs]

Intent is certainly a factor, and premeditation is certainly another.

As is motive.  Those 3 are the primary factors used in determining guilt.  But using one of those to ascribe a murder that's "worse" than another, and requiring a harsher judgement, based nothing more on skin color places one person's life more importantly than another, is clearly unfair, and demeaning to the person with the apparent wrong skin color

[Xavier_Onassis]

So sirs is against  giving a longer sentence to someone who kills a minority member, as opposed to killing someone that is not, such as, for example, sirs.

Reverse discrimination! Of course.

[BT]

because local police have on many occasions refused to take on a case in which race has been a factor.

Why not have the feds sue the local DA's for dereliction of duty, and violating equal protection under the law. Seems to me you are advocating punishing the wrong group.

[sirs]

So sirs is against  giving a longer sentence to someone who kills a minority member, as opposed to killing someone that is not, such as, for example, sirs.

Reverse discrimination! Of course.

What the frell??  On what planet is advocating equal punishment for equal crimes, based on the same intent,, i.e. killing, the notion of reverse discrimination??  Somone that murders me, based solely that I'm white, should be punished just the same as someone who murders me, for money.  I'm still dead.

(of course, I'll have shot him long before he gets anywhere close enough to try and kill me, but that's for another thread)

[kimba1]

Hmm
I recall several black celebrities say they still get pulled over.The topic about hate crime is legal equal treatment. It is true hatecrime laws doesn't give equal treatment but nobody except finally bt bring anything about enforcing existing laws for equal treatment.

The irony is xo brought up several points of loopsided legal treatments but the defense is almost consistently about people should get equal treatment never on such charges are not true.

It's funny statements are made but hardly no reference to counter.

I stated before the police totally had the ability to prevent hatecrime laws from coming to existance by bringout stats show they always gave equal treatment to all complaints. But somehow it seems the police wanted those laws to come about.

[Plane]

Perhaps they do.

What is in it for them?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Equal treatment might occur if everyone had equal legal representation. As it is, there is no such thing.

[BSB]

Frankly I wouldn't worry about it. She killed him. If they want to call it a hate crime, that's fine, who cares?

BSB