Thursday, July 23, 1998

Senate panel should reject hate crimes bill

The proposed Hate Crimes Prevention Act is a New Age sort of law; it deals with feelings. It says crimes motivated by hate are worse than the same crimes motivated by, say, greed, rage or sadism.

Like many bad bills, the hate crimes law is being justified by an incident that is dramatic, compelling and beside the point. In Texas, three white men are charged with chaining a black man to their pickup and dragging him to death. These low-lifes already are charged with murder; if convicted, they will almost certainly be executed.

What more would a federal hate crimes charge do? Well, says the law's advocates, it would express society's outrage. Society is already outraged, and, on conviction, the electric chair seems a pretty good way of showing it.

The hate crimes bill is rooted in an outgrowth of identity group politics. It holds that crimes against some people are worse than the same crimes against other people. The new law would make certain crimes "hate crimes" and thus subject to federal prosecution if the victims were singled out because of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, disability or sexual orientation.

The increasing federalization of criminal law is not a positive development. This bill would make federal crimes out of what are already crimes under state and local laws based on fuzzy assumptions about the perpetrator's motives. And it would not be hard to imagine cases of double jeopardy, where a person is found innocent of the underlying crime by a local jury and then tried again by the feds on the charge of hate.

Advocates of the law also point to what they say is evidence that hate crimes are increasing. The increase is because certain offenses have been reclassified as hate crimes. If this law passes, there will be a stunning increase in hate crimes - on paper - even if the overall crime rate drops.

The Senate Judiciary Committee should reject the Hate Crimes Prevention Act when it comes up later this week. Here's a quick reason why: An equal opportunity mugger deserves the same prison sentence as a bigoted mugger.