October 14, 2009

Bigot Bonus

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which President Obama plans to sign soon, is named after two men who were murdered in 1998. Shepard, a gay college student, was beaten to death in Wyoming. Byrd, a black hitchhiker, was dragged to death behind a pickup truck in Texas. Bigotry seemed to play a role in both crimes.

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which President Obama plans to sign soon, is named after two men who were murdered in 1998. Shepard, a gay college student, was beaten to death in Wyoming. Byrd, a black hitchhiker, was dragged to death behind a pickup truck in Texas. Bigotry seemed to play a role in both crimes.

Here is something else Matthew Shepard and James Byrd have in common: Their killers were arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison or death, all without the benefit of hate crime laws, state or federal. Hence it is very strange to slap their names onto a piece of legislation based on the premise that such crimes might go unpunished without a federal law aimed at bias-motivated violence.

In more than a decade of lobbying for this law, its supporters have never shown that state officials are letting people get away with murder, or lesser crimes of violence, when the victims belong to historically oppressed groups. Instead, they have presented the legislation as a litmus test of antipathy toward violent bigots and sympathy for their victims. Given this framing, it’s surprising the law’s opponents managed to resist it for so long, when all they had on their side was the Constitution and basic principles of justice.

As the Supreme Court has noted, the federal government has no general authority to fight crime. Yet this law covers any violent crime where the victim is selected “because of” his actual or perceived race, religion, national origin, gender, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity, as long as the crime in any way involves or “affects” interstate commerce, even if the connection is limited to a weapon made in another state or country.

Like state laws that enhance penalties for crimes when they are motivated by bigotry, the federal law requires courts to examine defendants’ beliefs. To prove that a defendant selected his victim based on one of the prohibited criteria, prosecutors inevitably will cite things he said at the time of the crime and other evidence of his hatred toward members of the victim’s group.

If someone hits me in California with a baseball bat made in Kentucky, that is not a federal crime. But if he does exactly the same thing while calling me a “dirty kike,” it is. No doubt the prosecutor also would deem it relevant that my attacker owned a dog-eared copy of “Mein Kampf” and belonged to a neo-Nazi group.

Consider the impact of federalizing this crime. In California, the maximum sentence for assault with a deadly weapon is four years. The state’s hate crime statute could extend that sentence by up to three years, for a total of seven. By contrast, the maximum sentence under the new federal law is 10 years. Hence my assailant could serve more time for his anti-Semitism than he does for his violence.

Imagine my attacker is acquitted in state court because the jury accepts his self-defense claim. Or suppose he is convicted and gets a one-year sentence. He can still be prosecuted in federal court.

The law allows a do-over if the Justice Department decides “the verdict or sentence obtained pursuant to State charges left demonstratively unvindicated the federal interest in eradicating bias-motivated violence.”

The idea, as then-Attorney General Janet Reno explained when the law was first proposed, is to “give people the opportunity to have a forum in which justice can be done if it is not done in the state court.”

Although such serial prosecutions are permitted under the doctrine of “dual sovereignty,” they look an awful lot like double jeopardy, prohibited by the Fifth Amendment. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., nevertheless claims the federal hate crime law upholds “the ideals of our Founding Fathers,” who evidently were big on punishing people for their beliefs, retrying defendants after they’re acquitted and letting Congress make a federal case out of anything that attracts its attention.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.