Crimes where victims are intentionally selected because of theirrace, sex, ethnicity, etc.

[Leslie Goldstein]

I cannot agree with Eugene's interpretation of the phrase "because of
sexual orientation" to mean that every rapist is guilty of a hate crime
(although if the law said "because of gender" or "on the basis of sex" I
would agree.)  Rapists or wife batterers do not generally care, imo, if
their victim is gay or straight.  THIS law (from Wisconsin) seemed to
target only sex-criminals with anti-gay animus (altho maybe there might
be some gays who would beat up on straights, I innocent life that I
lead, have never heard of such a thing).
LFG
p.s. whether rape and wife battering should be grouped with hate crimes
generally is , imo, a very difficult questions with good arguments on
both sides.

"Volokh, Eugene" wrote:

>
>
>         I think Wisconsin v. Mitchell got the matter right as a
> question of constitutional law; but it seems to me that group-based
> motives for crime are not particularly rare.
>
>         Recall that the law at issue in Mitchell provided for a
> penalty whenever the defendant "[i]ntentionally selects the person
> against who the crime . . . is committed . . . because of the race,
> religion, color, disability, sexual orientation, national origin or
> ancestry of that person."  This of course covers rare cases such as
> the one in Mitchell, where a group of young black men and boys who had
> just been discussing "Mississippi Burning" intentionally beat up a
> white boy (Mitchell asked the group "Do you all feel hyped up to move
> on some white people?" and told them "There goes a white boy; go get
> him").  But it also covers
>
>         *  pretty much all sex crimes (except the rare one where the
> criminal is genuinely indifferent as to whether he will rape or molest
> a man or a woman);
>
>         *  crimes where someone picks on a disabled person because
> he's an easier target (for instance, because the criminal thinks it's
> easier and safer to steal from a blind person than from someone else);
>
>         *  crimes where a member of one ethnic gang attacks a member
> of another gang, and part of the reason for the attack is the
> ethnicity of the gang;
>
>         *  crimes where someone robs a white or Asian passerby on the
> theory that they are likely to have more money, or that they're less
> likely to be a local resident and thus less likely to identify the
> criminal;
>
>         *  and many others.
>
> My guess is that if prosecutors were really looking for "hate crimes"
> enhancements in all cases where the formal criteria are satisfied, a
> huge range of crimes would qualify.  This in turn raises the question
> of exactly how prosecutors are selecting which cases to bring as hate
> cases, which may (or may not) pose a First Amendment problem.
>
>         True, in each of these cases the victim's race, sex, etc. is
> only part of the reason for the attack, but surely that's enough to
> qualify under the law -- otherwise, there'd never be hate crime
> prosecutions, since there are always other reasons (e.g., the victim
> is in the wrong place in the wrong time, the victim seems vulnerable
> [as in Mitchell], the victim isn't wearing a police officer's uniform,
> the victim said or did something that somehow provoked the offender,
> etc.).
>
>      -----Original Message-----
>      From:   Leslie Goldstein [SMTP:lesl at UDEL.EDU]
>      Sent:   Thursday, March 09, 2000 4:30 AM
>      To:     CONLAWPROF at listserv.ucla.edu
>      Subject:        Re: FIRST GENDER-BASED HATE CRIME CONVICTION
>
>      Replying to Jim Maule's latest post:
>      Do you really not see the significance between a group-based
>      motive for a crime, which I would suggest is pretty darn rare ,
>      and individual antagonism or individual circumstances as the
>      motive?  (or are you just being argumentative?) Robbing rich
>      people is not robbing them becasue they are rich but because they
>      happen to be carrying money--a non-rich person who just left an
>      ATM machine is a better target than a rich guy carrying just
>      credit cards.  Not only do hate crimes present the potential to
>      intimidate (and thereby cut down on the liberty of) a sizable
>      number of group members, but also, especially in an ethnic and
>      racial context, they present the additional disruptive potential
>      of gang war, group based retaliation, etc.  This is much less
>      likely when crimes are matters of individual antagonism or
>      particular circumstances opportunism.
>
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