A while back in NYC there was a nasty crime. A group of white young men wanted money for drugs and decided to lure a gay black man out and rob him. They lured him using on-line chat and beat and then ran him in front of a car killing him.
So, the prosecution went after them in addition to the murder charge with a hate crime.
The curve ball was that one of the perps revealed that he was gay himself. So, he argued…how can he be charged with a hate crime when he attacked a gay man being gay himself?
The prosecution disagreed (and the judge concurred with them noting that:
Under New York law, they [the prosecution] said, defendants can be convicted of a hate crime even if they bear no actual hatred for their victim.
“This is a case where the defendants deliberately set out to commit a violent crime against a man whom they intentionally selected because of his sexual orientation,” wrote state Supreme Court Justice Jill Konviser.
This bothers me. Then again all hate crimes legislation bothers me. A crime against a person is a crime. Hate crimes go to the thoughts and intents of a person and set some crimes as worse simply because of some status of a person. Does it really matter that Michael Sandy was black, or gay? He was lured out, robbed, beaten, and then killed. There is no doubt of that. Prosecute these cretins for their crimes and put them in jail. To tack on hate crimes even when (at least one of them) did not “hate” the victim is a travesty (as are all hate crimes).
That’s not a popular position to take but I agree with it.
It’s not the thought or the motive that matters – it’s the act and the premeditation or lack of it.
IMO, creating legislation that levies extra penalties based on a jury’s perception of what a criminal might have been thinking is wrong. And dangerous.