Nice find. I’ll be sure to check it out.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10188

As someone who digs Hentoff, allow me to urge you to read it.

Not that I’m telling you how to live, of course.

Thanks! I am interested in following this to see if it does devolve onto ’speech.’ I should like to see how the 1st Amend. is side stepped; perhaps I’ll be joining with my ‘liberal’ friends in resisting ’speech’ restrictions. Again, thank you.

The argument that this is a “hate speech” law goes like this: if I say “I hate damned white people,” then hit a white person, then my statement can be taken as evidence of my bias motive for the attack, one of the elements of the hate crime law.

Of course, if that’s the standard for what a violation of free speech looks like, then a vast number of existing laws violate free speech. If I say “I’m going to kill you for prosecuting my brother”, and then try to hit a federal prosecutor with an axe, then my statement can be taken as evidence that (1) I knew the victim was a prosecutor, (2) I attacked the victim because of his work as a prosecutor, and (3) I meant to kill the victim, all elements of the federal crime of attempted murder of a federal prosecutor.

Similarly, if I’ve spent the last ten years talking about how much I hate Naderites and how they deserve to die, and a Naderite turns up murdered on my street, my past statements can be used as evidence that I’m the one who killed him.

My main concern with Hate Crimes is if it is pursued to the extent that any crime against a protected group is considered a “hate crime”. A black guy and a white guy get into a shouting match at a bar, the severity of the crime suddenly depends on who hits who first.

Actually, hate motivation is the weak link in civil rights and hate crimes cases. It’s the element that most often leads prosecutors to decline the case (at least as a hate crimes case) and the element that most often leads to acquittal or a hung jury. I lost a civil rights case I was prosecuting against one of two brothers — the jury concluded that the first brother was a racist who was harassing a local family out of racial animus, but that the second brother was just an asshole and a follower. Another time I had to refer a hate crimes case over to the DA’s office — no federal hook — and the DA convicted the defendant at trial of assault, but not the hate-crime enhancement, despite the fact that the defendant assaulted the victim after using anti-Semitic slurs against him. Also, prosecutors have historically been pretty timid about bringing hate crime charges rather than plain-vanilla charges — sometimes leading to anger in the victim community in question.

So, could prosecutors charge a hate crime every time that the victim is a different gender/race/sexual preference/religion than the defendant? Yes. Prosecutors could charge every assault as assault with intent to kill. Prosecutors could charge every possession of drugs case as possession with intent to distribute. But there is no basis to conclude that they would do so here.

Will are you going to cover S 909 (?), a pending Senate (?) bill concerning “hate speech?”

Actually, SB 909 is the Senate version of the House bill being discussed here. Can you point to the particular portion that criminalizes speech, please?

Do these circumstances exist outside of the theoreticals you’ve considered?