http://www.newsobserver.com/2015/02/13/4554739/prosecution-of-hate-crimes-are.html
Few could argue that walking into someone’s home and shooting three people dead is anything but a hateful act.
But legal experts caution that it might be much more difficult to say for sure that Craig Stephen Hicks, the 46-year-old community college student accused of three counts of murder, should also face federal hate crime charges.
Hate crimes, by federal statute, are very specific and difficult to prove.
“You don’t have to hate someone to commit a hate crime,” said Jack Levin, a professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University in Boston who has written about prejudice and hate for more than two decades. “Or you can hate someone and not commit a hate crime.”
The shooting deaths of Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, appear to be the result of an ongoing dispute over parking in the condominium complex where they died, according to police. But family members and others suggest that the cultural background and Muslim religion of the victims was surely a factor and say the shooting should be considered a hate crime.
The FBI posts the following definition of a hate crime on its web site:
“A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, Congress has defined a hate crime as a ‘criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.’ Hate itself is not a crime – and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties.”
On Thursday, as family and friends buried Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha, the FBI announced that it had opened an inquiry into the Chapel Hill shootings.
On Friday, President Barack Obama issued a statement about that probe.
“No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship,” Obama said in the statement. “Michelle and I offer our condolences to the victims’ loved ones. As we saw with the overwhelming presence at the funeral of these young Americans, we are all one American family.”
Levin, the author of “Hate Crimes: The Rising Tide of Bigotry and Bloodshed” and “Hate Crimes Revisited: America’s War on Those Who Are Different,” said most hate crimes in this country involved people who did not know each other.
In 2012, according to the most recent hate crime statistics on the FBI site, 1,730 law enforcement agencies reported 5,796 hate crime incidents involving 6,718 offenses.
Forty-four North Carolina law enforcement agencies submitted 119 incident reports, but it was unclear whether any of those reports resulted in hate crime charges.
Nationally, there were 5,790 single-bias incidents that involved 6,705 offenses, with 7,151 victims, according to the 2012 statistics, and 5,322 offenders.
Levin said he thinks a much greater number of incidents occur.
“We vastly underestimate the prevalence of hate crimes in the United States,” he said. “The standard is so strict. It forces us to get into the head of the perpetrator and determine motivation.”
Darrell A. Miller, a Duke University law professor, said the history of trying to get at the animus of certain groups goes back to the 19th century and Reconstruction America.
Laws have evolved through the centuries, and in 2009, almost a decade after the murders of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. raised questions about the strength of hate-crime laws, the law was changed to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.
Shepard, who was a gay 21-year-old student, died in 1998 days after being brutally beaten and tied to a fence on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyo. Also in 1998, Byrd, a 49-year-old black man, was chained to a pickup truck and dragged to his death near Jasper, Texas.
The law was tested recently in the trials of the leader of the breakaway Amish sect and his followers accused of a bizarre series of attacks in eastern Ohio in 2011 in which they cut the hair and beards of rivals.
In August 2014, a federal appeals court overturned hate-crime convictions in those cases, ruling that the trial judge had given the jury an overly expansive definition of a hate crime.
At the urging of federal prosecutors, the judge told the jury that the religion of the victims must be only one “significant factor” among others in motivating the assaults.
But the appeals panel ruled that the judge should have told jurors that, for the attacks to be a hate crime, the religion of the victim had to be the predominant motivating factor. The evidence, according to the 2014 ruling, did not support that conclusion.
Since Tuesday’s killings in Chapel Hill, many have called for patience as investigators continue their probe.
“There will be others to determine to what extent hate was involved in this, but one thing I know for sure – it was not an act of love,” Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs at Duke, said on Wednesday, as thousands gathered on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus to mourn three lives lost.
Few could argue that walking into someone’s home and shooting three people dead is anything but a hateful act.
But legal experts caution that it might be much more difficult to say for sure that Craig Stephen Hicks, the 46-year-old community college student accused of three counts of murder, should also face federal hate crime charges.
Hate crimes, by federal statute, are very specific and difficult to prove.
“You don’t have to hate someone to commit a hate crime,” said Jack Levin, a professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University in Boston who has written about prejudice and hate for more than two decades. “Or you can hate someone and not commit a hate crime.”
The shooting deaths of Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, appear to be the result of an ongoing dispute over parking in the condominium complex where they died, according to police. But family members and others suggest that the cultural background and Muslim religion of the victims was surely a factor and say the shooting should be considered a hate crime.
The FBI posts the following definition of a hate crime on its web site:
“A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, Congress has defined a hate crime as a ‘criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.’ Hate itself is not a crime – and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties.”
On Thursday, as family and friends buried Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha, the FBI announced that it had opened an inquiry into the Chapel Hill shootings.
On Friday, President Barack Obama issued a statement about that probe.
“No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship,” Obama said in the statement. “Michelle and I offer our condolences to the victims’ loved ones. As we saw with the overwhelming presence at the funeral of these young Americans, we are all one American family.”
Levin, the author of “Hate Crimes: The Rising Tide of Bigotry and Bloodshed” and “Hate Crimes Revisited: America’s War on Those Who Are Different,” said most hate crimes in this country involved people who did not know each other.
In 2012, according to the most recent hate crime statistics on the FBI site, 1,730 law enforcement agencies reported 5,796 hate crime incidents involving 6,718 offenses.
Forty-four North Carolina law enforcement agencies submitted 119 incident reports, but it was unclear whether any of those reports resulted in hate crime charges.
Nationally, there were 5,790 single-bias incidents that involved 6,705 offenses, with 7,151 victims, according to the 2012 statistics, and 5,322 offenders.
Levin said he thinks a much greater number of incidents occur.
“We vastly underestimate the prevalence of hate crimes in the United States,” he said. “The standard is so strict. It forces us to get into the head of the perpetrator and determine motivation.”
Darrell A. Miller, a Duke University law professor, said the history of trying to get at the animus of certain groups goes back to the 19th century and Reconstruction America.
Laws have evolved through the centuries, and in 2009, almost a decade after the murders of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. raised questions about the strength of hate-crime laws, the law was changed to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.
Shepard, who was a gay 21-year-old student, died in 1998 days after being brutally beaten and tied to a fence on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyo. Also in 1998, Byrd, a 49-year-old black man, was chained to a pickup truck and dragged to his death near Jasper, Texas.
The law was tested recently in the trials of the leader of the breakaway Amish sect and his followers accused of a bizarre series of attacks in eastern Ohio in 2011 in which they cut the hair and beards of rivals.
In August 2014, a federal appeals court overturned hate-crime convictions in those cases, ruling that the trial judge had given the jury an overly expansive definition of a hate crime.
At the urging of federal prosecutors, the judge told the jury that the religion of the victims must be only one “significant factor” among others in motivating the assaults.
But the appeals panel ruled that the judge should have told jurors that, for the attacks to be a hate crime, the religion of the victim had to be the predominant motivating factor. The evidence, according to the 2014 ruling, did not support that conclusion.
Since Tuesday’s killings in Chapel Hill, many have called for patience as investigators continue their probe.
“There will be others to determine to what extent hate was involved in this, but one thing I know for sure – it was not an act of love,” Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs at Duke, said on Wednesday, as thousands gathered on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus to mourn three lives lost.
just don't blame the lawyers afterwards.
