My concerns is that people will link the bigot part with the crime even if it didn't really come into play. Based on how people seem to operate these days, I don't find it far fetched to imagine someone committing a crime and the prosecution digging up a 10 year old FB post with a racist joke and then saying "See, he hates Samoans and he…
My concerns is that people will link the bigot part with the crime even if it didn't really come into play. Based on how people seem to operate these days, I don't find it far fetched to imagine someone committing a crime and the prosecution digging up a 10 year old FB post with a racist joke and then saying "See, he hates Samoans and he stole a car from someone who happens to be Samoan, so it is a hate crime, lock them up."
As with so many laws, adding more little bits and bobs to our laws just opens up more ways for people to manipulate the system. And I would prefer our laws remain as fair and agnostic as possible (which, they are already pretty far from that benchmark).
Most judges already have leeway with sentencing (except where we have forced specific sentencing). Why not just let the judge/jury decide the guilt of the base crime and then decide longer sentencing based on the circumstances (like we already do) rather than codifying it into a law?
My concerns is that people will link the bigot part with the crime even if it didn't really come into play. Based on how people seem to operate these days, I don't find it far fetched to imagine someone committing a crime and the prosecution digging up a 10 year old FB post with a racist joke and then saying "See, he hates Samoans and he stole a car from someone who happens to be Samoan, so it is a hate crime, lock them up."
As with so many laws, adding more little bits and bobs to our laws just opens up more ways for people to manipulate the system. And I would prefer our laws remain as fair and agnostic as possible (which, they are already pretty far from that benchmark).
Most judges already have leeway with sentencing (except where we have forced specific sentencing). Why not just let the judge/jury decide the guilt of the base crime and then decide longer sentencing based on the circumstances (like we already do) rather than codifying it into a law?