Bias Crimes: How to Judge?

[blackstone]

Staten Island: Assault Investigation

A black man’s jaw was broken when he was struck with a baseball bat about 8 p.m. Tuesday in a dispute with about five white men that is being investigated as a possible bias crime, the police said yesterday. The victim, 20, whose name was not released, was with acquaintances near the corner of Simonson Avenue and Heusden Street near the north shore when he leaned on or sat on a silver-colored Cadillac owned by one of the white men, the police said. The Cadillac owner objected, the police said, and an argument ensued between the two groups, and racial slurs were made. One of the white men struck the victim with the bat, the police said. After the assault, the white men fled in the car, the police said. The victim was taken to Staten Island University Hospital. His injuries were not life-threatening but did require surgery, the police said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/nyregion...fs-ASSAULT.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/nyregion/18mbrfs-ASSAULT.html)

How do you judge a crime to be a hate crime or a bias crime? Is it because racial slurs were made?If no racial slurs were made can it still be a hate crime?


Forward!

[MarxSchmarx]

I can only speak for the U$A.


How do you judge a crime to be a hate crime or a bias crime?

Motive is notoriously hard to prove, but pretty much the same way you judge other motives. Public or private statements (e.g. contract for a hit), patterns of behavior (you had been caught spray-painting swastikas in synagogues), rational incentives (insurance policy), etc...


If no racial slurs were made can it still be a hate crime?

Yes. For example, if somebody wrote in their diary; "Dear Diary. I hate Zoroastrians. The next Zoroastrian I meet, I will kick the living shit out of him or her.", and was subsequently arrested for assault on a Zoroastrian old man that was sitting on a park bench, and it can be shown in a court of law that the accused had no ties to the old man, that the man was obviously a Zorastrian, and the old man had no other feature that made him out to be a target of assault, then yes, one could be prosecuted under existing hate crime laws without ever having uttered a racial slur.

Of course, all this needs to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. But in some cases (like white skinheads with swastika tatoos beating up an old African woman) it is rather obvious that racial hatred was involved.