Man Is Held in Anti-Muslim Stabbing of Cabdriver

[themadscientist]

As a service industry worker I can confirm customers can push one to the edge. My office has no beer and no emergency slide so I can't make a dramatic exit if I lose it.

[AZhitman]

Might be, but that would depend on the motivation for the crimes. I don't believe there's legislation that protects you on the basis of your profession, so simply going after cops isn't enough. Also, that your victims happened to be one race or another isn't enough. The motive is what drives the extra charge.

You've already argued ad nauseum against even considering motive. Pick a horse and stay on it.

[IBCoupe]

Against considering motive where it's entirely immaterial. There's some agreement that hate crimes shouldn't be, and so that the motive in this case should be immaterial, but that's just not the case. Hate crime legislation is in place, and motive is material.

Absent the existence of hate crime legislation, I'd say his motive is entirely irrelevant.

[stebo0728]

Against considering motive where it's entirely immaterial. There's some agreement that hate crimes shouldn't be, and so that the motive in this case should be immaterial, but that's just not the case. Hate crime legislation is in place, and motive is material.

Absent the existence of hate crime legislation, I'd say his motive is entirely irrelevant.

That sounds like a lawyer excuse. Hate can be used as motive, just should not be weighed upon as a seperate charge. Let me ask you this? Could there be a day when liable and slander suits are accompanied by "hate crime" or "hate speech" charges?

[IBCoupe]

I don't see why it couldn't be legislated that way. But libel and slander are on their way out, anyways - the rise of the blogosphere has ensured that.

[audtatious]

I suspect you're being facetious, but here's how it works:

1. There has to be a hate for a certain protected class.
2. There has to be a crime of some level of violence against a member of that protected class.
3. The crime has to have been motivated by that hate.

Still unclear?

May I ask the definition of a "protected class"?

[AZhitman]

Absent the existence of hate crime legislation, I'd say his motive is entirely irrelevant.

Your last name must be Armstrong, 'cause boy, you STRETCHIN'.

Remove the existence of hate crime laws, then. Either his motive is relevant or irrelevant.

You can't simply choose to have something both ways based on the existence of some obscure, poorly-drafted, ill-conceived, nebulous legislation that shouldn't have existed in the first place.

Honestly, from a top-down view, it kinda makes you look like an apologist for radicals. You can't simultaneously dismiss the Hood shooter's motivations and play up the cabbie stabber's motivations.

On a side note, I'd posit that the decision to charge someone with a "hate crime" is quite capricious, and an emotional decision, and isn't applied fairly or equitably based on the letter of the law. Just my observation...

[audtatious]

Hate crimes legislation assumes that blacks need protections from the hatred of whites, the disabled require protection from being hated by the able-bodied, homosexuals need protecting from heterosexuals, etc., and does nothing but divide the population into a victim class and a perpetrator class. At this point, I'm white and hetero so I'm automatically enrolled in the perpetrator class.

Ain't that special.....

[AZhitman]

1. There has to be a hate for a certain protected class.
2. There has to be a crime of some level of violence against a member of that protected class.
3. The crime has to have been motivated by that hate.
Still unclear?

Yep. And you will be too.

1. Define "hate". Now, quantify it. Prove its existence. Further, prove its existence on the date of the crime. Better yet, prove it's existence at the MONENT of the crime. People are fickle.

Example: There's a certain recently deceased Senator who, by virtue of his past actions and affiliations, hated Black folks. This is undisputed. If you walked up to him at age 80 and asked him "Do you hate Black people?", he would've said "No." Is he a liar?

I used to hate onions. Now I love 'em. I hated cuddling. Now I'm a cuddler. I hated the premise of SB1070. I've changed my stance. Hated cats. Now I own 2. I hated the idea of building a mosque in lower Manhattan. I've re-evaluated and changed course.

Your challenge, too, is to determine if these things really indicate "hate" or just "strong dislike". Or maybe even "mild dislike", with the existence of an easy mechanism for avoidance.

If I say, "I hate Eskimos, I mean I REALLY F***ING HATE Eskimos", yet I live in Phoenix and never go north of Flagstaff, is that REALLY hate?

2 . "Protected class". If it doesn't encompass ALL human beings, it's discriminatory, and by definition, is then unconstitutional.

You can't afford protections to one group based on some erroneous perception of "minority" status. Minority WHERE? If I'm punched on the street corner in San Francisco, is that a hate crime? I'm a minority there. How about Harlem? Yep. There too. How about if I'm in Compton, yo? Yeah, not too many of "me" down there either. At a Justin Beiber concert? Yeah, I'm outta place (and a minority) damn near everywhere it seems. So are you.

What if it's common knowledge that I hate Asians, and then I commit a crime against someone who's 1/4 Asian? Am I 1/4 liable for my actions? What if they look Mexican, not Asian? What if that Asian was wearing a chicken costume? How could I know they were Asian? Are they a member of a protected class if they don't know it? What if I, as the perpetrator, don't know it?

A "disabled" person is protected, but a drunk person isn't? How about someone with diabetes? Someone who's had heart surgery? Cancer survivor? The edlerly? When does one become elderly (or is it quantifiable?) How come harelips aren't a protected class but homosexuals are? I mean, hell - one is obvious, the other can be concealed... Stupid legislation.

3. Proving motivation in order to prove motivation. Say WHA?? As you've said before, it's nigh impossible, and according to you, irrelevant. I think a failure to adequately define #1 and #2 above forces us to consider #3 irrelevant.

If your position is that motivations are irrelevant, then say so - While I'll disagree, I'll respect your position. Quit leaning on some stinking crap-pile of legislation to justify a flawed perspective.

[IBCoupe]

May I ask the definition of a "protected class"?

One that's defined by law; there's a few different laws that make up Federal hate crime legislation. There's the 1964 Federal Civil Rights Law, the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, and the 2009 Matthew Shepard law. They come together to create additional punishment for crimes committed on the basis of (actual or perceived) race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual identity, sexual preference, or disability.

You can't simply choose to have something both ways based on the existence of some obscure, poorly-drafted, ill-conceived, nebulous legislation that shouldn't have existed in the first place.

Why not? Without the hate crime, there's no need to look to his motive. The only exception would be if he brought up a mental state defense - self-defense or insanity. And even with insanity, that he was crazy mad about Muslims doesn't actually go against his defense.

Honestly, from a top-down view, it kinda makes you look like an apologist for radicals. You can't simultaneously dismiss the Hood shooter's motivations and play up the cabbie stabber's motivations.

Or somebody who doesn't like giving the government more power than what it's earned through the proper avenues: namely, through crafting legislation.

Whether a constitutional law is a good idea is not pertinent to a determination of what is logically needed to support a charge. He's probably on tape doing the thing; he was caught red-handed, we don't need to know why he did it to charge him with murder (or attempted murder; did the cabby survive?). If you introduce the possibility of a hate crime charge on top of it, suddenly his motive becomes central.

[AZhitman]

Then I'd argue the Fort Hood shooter wasn't adequately charged with multiple counts of hate crime.

[audtatious]

May I ask the definition of a "protected class"?

One that's defined by law; there's a few different laws that make up Federal hate crime legislation. There's the 1964 Federal Civil Rights Law, the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, and the 2009 Matthew Shepard law. They come together to create additional punishment for crimes committed on the basis of (actual or perceived) race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual identity, sexual preference, or disability.

So, in effect everyone is in some form of a protected class yet some are obviously more protected than others based on current use?

[IBCoupe]

Greg:
On what basis?

Aud:
What about current use makes suggests to you that there's a disparity? That there are fewer hate crime charges against minorities?

Could be that there are fewer racially-motivated crimes against whites.

[AZhitman]

He hated Americans, silly.

[IBCoupe]

Well, you go ahead and try to bring those charges then. Use what you know about his motive and try to get it done. I don't think it will get far, and I think you know it. Which sort of goes to show that there wasn't a use for his motive, after all.

[audtatious]

Could be that there are fewer racially-motivated crimes against whites.

Could also be that there is more of a tendency to report a white on black crime as a hate crime (when it isn't) than reporting a black on white crime as one.

[IBCoupe]

Could be, but without substantiation, I'm reticent to say that some are "more protected."

[audtatious]

Exactly. Neither claim can really be substantiated as we really don't know what is being missed and what's not.

[IBCoupe]

Right. So there's no basis for the assertion that there does exist an undue preference in the application of hate crime law. I suppose you might argue that there's no basis for an assertion that there isn't, but I'd have to ask: who's doing that?

[AZhitman]

Good point. "Who's doing that?" No one. Maybe the "under-protected" just don't whine as much.

BTW, in that prior post, I thnk you might have meant to say "an inequitable (or unequal) application" of hate crime law, rather than, "an undue preference".

[IBCoupe]

Actually, I consciously chose those words. "Preference" was aud's word, and I added "undue" because there must logically be preference given to those who are actually victims covered by the provisions of the law. Maybe this is just really technical and philosophical, but there's actually a decision that's been made along the way that we're going to apply our law to who we previously said it should be applied to.

So I'm drawing a pretty irrelevant distinction between "due preference" and "undue preference," which didn't need to be drawn in order to get through my larger point. I was just feeling a little bored.

[AZhitman]

Gotcha.

In that case, I'd argue there's an inequitable (or unequal) application of hate crime law. I'd like to see a statistical breakdown of the demographics of victims of charged hate crimes.

I'd posit that there's not a lot of hetero White males in that bunch... yet if you believe the media, we're the most hated demographic of all.

Certainly we're responsible of most, if not all, of society's ills.

[IBCoupe]

Wait, which media says whites are the most hated demographic of all?

[audtatious]

because there must logically be preference given to those who are actually victims covered by the provisions of the law.

That assumes that the crimes are properly listed as a "hate crime" in the first place. 69.3% of all hate crimes reported as a racial-bias hate crime in 2007 was white against black while 18.4% were black against white (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2007/incidents.htm). I would tend to lean to the side that less black on white crimes were labeled as "hate" while more white on black crime is labeled as "hate". At least before 2008 when more race-based issues have been brought up. Again, that's just my opinion.

[IBCoupe]

What I meant by what I wrote in that quoted portion was, "In contrast to giving preference to those who are not actually victims covered by the provisions of the law." That's "due" preference.

Your supposition that there are crimes that qualify for hate crime status that aren't categorized as such could be evidence for the "undue" preference you and I were talking about.

[audtatious]

gotcha

[AZhitman]

Wait, which media says whites are the most hated demographic of all?

The ones that DON'T say that Blacks / Gays / Women / Jews / Mormons / the elderly / etc are to blame for all of society's ills.

Every group gets a free pass but the white hetero male. We're the ones that are expected to "be more tolerant".

[heliochrome85]

Every group gets a free pass but the white hetero male. We're the ones that are expected to "be more tolerant".

its the cost of having a high credit score

[AZhitman]

You haven't driven through many trailer parks, I take it?

[heliochrome85]

You haven't been driven through many trailer parks, I take it?

fixed that for you.
and no