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So I suppose you believe that a somone who killed another person unintentionally and by accident should be punished just the same as someone who killed another

by gnosis 14y ago

So I suppose you believe that a somone who killed another person unintentionally and by accident should be punished just the same as someone who killed another person deliberately and with a lot of premeditation. After all, the only thing that differentiates the two cases is the intent of the perpetrator. And we can't measure intent, can we? Or can we?

protomyth 14y ago
No. Intent is part of the law and action of a crime. I specifically added the self-defense part to my first post to illustrate that. Belief of the person is only important as view from the action and circumstances of the crime (eg. did this person knife the person because they were being attacked). It is generically applied to all people regardless of their own attributes (race, creed, etc.). The law is blind and we are all equal. Intent in the commission of a crime is a separate idea and has nothing to do with "hate crimes".
- gnosis 14y ago
  Intent, or (to use the legal term) mens rea, has everything to do with hate crimes. To quote David Neiwert yet again: Lawrence points to the distinction between bias crimes and their underlying parallel crimes, which in effect create two tiers of evidence for any kind of hate-crime prosecution to succeed. At both tiers, the criminal's mens rea is an essential component. In the first tier of a crime -- say, an assault -- the intent to commit the crime still must be established; at the second tier, both the first-level intent and the second-tier bias motivation must be proven. For a bias-crime prosecution to succeed, it must establish both tiers of mens rea. Thus someone who merely partakes of hate speech, with no intent to intimidate, is guiltless of a hate crime, because the first tier of motivation is absent, and thus no free-speech rights have been infringed upon. But because menacing and intimidation, all of which in fact take the form of words alone, are punishable crimes in every state, anyone using hate speech to terrorize his neighbors has partaken of a bias crime. Consider, for instance, the example of cross burning. A white supremacist who burns a cross at a private rally is undoubtedly voicing a kind of racial hate, but there has been no attempt to intimidate or menace anyone, and no crime has been committed. Likewise, someone who, say, dumped garbage on a black neighbor's lawn would only be guilty of harassment or intimidation, not a bias crime (unless, of course, evidence existed he had done so because of the neighbor's race). But someone who burns a cross on his neighbor's lawn has clearly committed a hate crime, because he has both the intent to intimidate and racial bias as his motivation. In this sense, hate-crime laws avoid running afoul of the First Amendment in the same fashion as any other of the myriad sentence-enhancement laws, including anti-terrorism statutes, because they all reflect the differences in mens rea among acts that are already established crimes. More to the point, there are limits to free-speech rights; threats and intimidation are already illegal, as are incitement to riot, incitement to murder, and other kinds of speech. And indeed the Supreme Court recently has moved in this direction in upholding the constitutionality of hate-crime laws. The recent cross-burning case, Virginia v. Black, produced a March 2003 ruling (authored by Sandra Day O'Connor) that followed this logic closely. The state of Virginia, the Court said, was well within its rights to outlaw cross-burnings meant to intimidate: The protections the First Amendment affords speech and expressive conduct are not absolute. This Court has long recognized that the government may regulate certain categories of expression consistent with the Constitution. … For example, the First Amendment permits a State to ban "true threats," … which encompass those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals. … The speaker need not actually intend to carry out the threat. Rather, a prohibition on true threats protects individuals from the fear of violence and the disruption that fear engenders, as well as from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur. … Intimidation in the constitutionally proscribable sense of the word is a type of true threat, where a speaker directs a threat to a person or group of persons with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bodily harm or death.
  - protomyth 14y ago
    Look, I don't believe the premise of the person you are quoting and to put it simply without 6 poorly spaced paragraphs: "But someone who burns a cross on his neighbor's lawn has clearly committed a hate crime" No, they are guilty of harassment, property damage, and possibly assault depending on the legal definition in the jurisdiction. The last paragraph does not support "hate crimes" legislation, it points out what a threat is.
    - gnosis 14y ago
      "No, they are guilty of harassment, property damage, and possibly assault depending on the legal definition in the jurisdiction." Well, according to the hate crime legislation Neiwert is referring to, they are guilty of commiting a hate crime. Whether they should be guilty of commiting a hate crime (depending on your opinion of the worth of hate crime legislation) or whether that hate crime legislation itself should exist is debatable, and you can argue one way or the other. But it is clear that a violation of the existing hate crime legislation has occurred in the example given by Neiwert above, for the reasons he gives. As for your implication that the underlying crimes of harrassment, property damager, and assault are enough, I refer you to the second half of an earlier Niewert quote I posted above.[1] "The last paragraph does not support "hate crimes" legislation, it points out what a threat is." A threat to whom exactly? To people who single out others based on their race, color, creed, sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin, religion or gender and commit harrassment, property damage, and assault "with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bodily harm or death"? I sure hope they feel threatened. Because they need to realize that our society will not tolerate these sorts of actions, just as society has less tolerance for deliberate, premeditated killing than it does for unintentional, accidental killing. Intent does matter, and that's what hate crime legislation is a recognition of. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5622339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5622339
      - protomyth 14y ago
        I believe all "hate crime" legislation is bunk and sets up unfair interpretations of situations. The threat is to a fellow human and it should be punished in the same way no matter the classification of the victim. Equal means equal under the law. Anything else is a political stunt.

by gnosis 14y ago

protomyth 14y ago

No. Intent is part of the law and action of a crime. I specifically added the self-defense part to my first post to illustrate that. Belief of the person is only important as view from the action and circumstances of the crime (eg. did this person knife the person because they were being attacked). It is generically applied to all people regardless of their own attributes (race, creed, etc.). The law is blind and we are all equal. Intent in the commission of a crime is a separate idea and has nothing to do with "hate crimes".

gnosis 14y ago
Intent, or (to use the legal term) mens rea, has everything to do with hate crimes. To quote David Neiwert yet again: Lawrence points to the distinction between bias crimes and their underlying parallel crimes, which in effect create two tiers of evidence for any kind of hate-crime prosecution to succeed. At both tiers, the criminal's mens rea is an essential component. In the first tier of a crime -- say, an assault -- the intent to commit the crime still must be established; at the second tier, both the first-level intent and the second-tier bias motivation must be proven. For a bias-crime prosecution to succeed, it must establish both tiers of mens rea. Thus someone who merely partakes of hate speech, with no intent to intimidate, is guiltless of a hate crime, because the first tier of motivation is absent, and thus no free-speech rights have been infringed upon. But because menacing and intimidation, all of which in fact take the form of words alone, are punishable crimes in every state, anyone using hate speech to terrorize his neighbors has partaken of a bias crime. Consider, for instance, the example of cross burning. A white supremacist who burns a cross at a private rally is undoubtedly voicing a kind of racial hate, but there has been no attempt to intimidate or menace anyone, and no crime has been committed. Likewise, someone who, say, dumped garbage on a black neighbor's lawn would only be guilty of harassment or intimidation, not a bias crime (unless, of course, evidence existed he had done so because of the neighbor's race). But someone who burns a cross on his neighbor's lawn has clearly committed a hate crime, because he has both the intent to intimidate and racial bias as his motivation. In this sense, hate-crime laws avoid running afoul of the First Amendment in the same fashion as any other of the myriad sentence-enhancement laws, including anti-terrorism statutes, because they all reflect the differences in mens rea among acts that are already established crimes. More to the point, there are limits to free-speech rights; threats and intimidation are already illegal, as are incitement to riot, incitement to murder, and other kinds of speech. And indeed the Supreme Court recently has moved in this direction in upholding the constitutionality of hate-crime laws. The recent cross-burning case, Virginia v. Black, produced a March 2003 ruling (authored by Sandra Day O'Connor) that followed this logic closely. The state of Virginia, the Court said, was well within its rights to outlaw cross-burnings meant to intimidate: The protections the First Amendment affords speech and expressive conduct are not absolute. This Court has long recognized that the government may regulate certain categories of expression consistent with the Constitution. … For example, the First Amendment permits a State to ban "true threats," … which encompass those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals. … The speaker need not actually intend to carry out the threat. Rather, a prohibition on true threats protects individuals from the fear of violence and the disruption that fear engenders, as well as from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur. … Intimidation in the constitutionally proscribable sense of the word is a type of true threat, where a speaker directs a threat to a person or group of persons with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bodily harm or death.
- protomyth 14y ago
  Look, I don't believe the premise of the person you are quoting and to put it simply without 6 poorly spaced paragraphs: "But someone who burns a cross on his neighbor's lawn has clearly committed a hate crime" No, they are guilty of harassment, property damage, and possibly assault depending on the legal definition in the jurisdiction. The last paragraph does not support "hate crimes" legislation, it points out what a threat is.
  - gnosis 14y ago
    "No, they are guilty of harassment, property damage, and possibly assault depending on the legal definition in the jurisdiction." Well, according to the hate crime legislation Neiwert is referring to, they are guilty of commiting a hate crime. Whether they should be guilty of commiting a hate crime (depending on your opinion of the worth of hate crime legislation) or whether that hate crime legislation itself should exist is debatable, and you can argue one way or the other. But it is clear that a violation of the existing hate crime legislation has occurred in the example given by Neiwert above, for the reasons he gives. As for your implication that the underlying crimes of harrassment, property damager, and assault are enough, I refer you to the second half of an earlier Niewert quote I posted above.[1] "The last paragraph does not support "hate crimes" legislation, it points out what a threat is." A threat to whom exactly? To people who single out others based on their race, color, creed, sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin, religion or gender and commit harrassment, property damage, and assault "with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bodily harm or death"? I sure hope they feel threatened. Because they need to realize that our society will not tolerate these sorts of actions, just as society has less tolerance for deliberate, premeditated killing than it does for unintentional, accidental killing. Intent does matter, and that's what hate crime legislation is a recognition of. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5622339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5622339
    - protomyth 14y ago
      I believe all "hate crime" legislation is bunk and sets up unfair interpretations of situations. The threat is to a fellow human and it should be punished in the same way no matter the classification of the victim. Equal means equal under the law. Anything else is a political stunt.