Crime and Punishment

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A horrific crime against a gay couple, severely scalded with boiling water while they slept. But even though Georgia is one of five states that do not have hate crime statutes, as the Washington Post reports, the perpetrator received a 40-year-prison sentence.

Not sure what a hate crime statute would have added, but support for state hate crime laws is high on the LGBT political priority list. Others point out that it’s better to punish actions, especially heinous actions as in this case, and not prioritize some forms of hate (i.e., group-directed animus) above others in terms of the severity of the punishment imposed.

As I’ve previously noted, hate crime supporters often oppose the death penalty, so in some cases involving first-degree murder in which a life sentence has been handed out, they simultaneously support/oppose the next logical step-up in punishment.

27 Comments for “Crime and Punishment”

  1. posted by Doug on

    What is your point Stephen? So you found 1 example of justice for a crime against an LGBT couple. I can show you tens and probably hundreds of crimes against LGBT folks where there is no justice. I’m beginning to think that your hatred of progressives is causing you to lose your grip on reality. I would suggest to you that the perpetrator of this crime was probably on your side of the political spectrum. Why don’t you work on changing the conservative mindset against the LGBT community.

  2. posted by Jorge on

    Yes, I can see why they don’t have a hate crimes law.

    YES
    NO

    How can you sentence someone to more time for an assault than for a death? The prosecutor argued, and the jury agreed beyond a reasonable doubt, that it was premeditated. “He picked the biggest pot in the house.” Why did he even bother going to trial? The attorney tried to use the low-class hate defense to get a lesser conviction.

    Not sure what a hate crime statute would have added

    It would have added from the outset that which was within the judgment and discretion of the assistant district attorney: bonus holy indignation damage. “He picked the biggest pot in the house.” It’s an attribute that’s in heavy supply in the Republican-controlled South.

    The ability to judge actions moral vs. immoral, unlawful vs. heinous, has been left to the discretion of the executive branch of government, and the people have decided the executive branch has done this well enough. This does not have to be. The people can say that they will decide on what morality is, and legislate hate crime laws to cement the message, removing discretion from law enforcement, prosecutors and judges and establishing what the morality of the community is.

    So long as the people retain the power to act, that is satisfactory to me.

    • posted by JohnInCA on

      I’m not sure Mr. Miller is aware of this, but one of the chief ways that Federal Hate Crime laws are used is when a state prosecutor appears to intend to go easy on someone. Hate Crime charges give the fed an opportunity to step in and take over a case and seek a verdict that they feel is closer to justice.

      So a case like this, where the prosecutor was going after it hard? Is not why hate crime laws exist. They exist because of state prosecutors who gave slaps on the wrist for murders and assaults.

      You want to argue against hate crime laws? Go point at one of those cases and argue that the Fed shouldn’t have stepped in to see justice done.

      • posted by JohnInCA on

        … why did the system attach my comment to Jorge’s post? Weird comment system.

  3. posted by Doug on

    ‘How can you sentence someone to more time for an assault than for a death?’

    If you know anything about burns covering a significant part of ones body, the excruciating pain which can last a lifetime, the multiple surgeries, the disfigurement, not to mention the financial cost, I think you could make a reasonable argument that this assault was worse than death. One of the young men who was burned had to spend 2 weeks in a medically induced coma to survive.

    • posted by Jorge on

      I just hate the idea of shedding light and showing hope when it reveals such depravity.

      I want to say it is all hopeless, and that all the efforts of the officer, the surgeon, and the prosecutor were fruitless, but that is a lie! Working together, even if separately, something happened. There is a verdict’s impact on the victim statement. Then before long I will believe the lie again and go through the motions because I know I believe the truth…

  4. posted by Houndentenor on

    Back in the 80s it seemed necessary to try to get a federal hate crimes law so that the feds could prosecute crimes against gay people when the locals wouldn’t. We even had a case in Texas where two men who murdered a gay man got off easy. For those unfamiliar here’s a refresher on how bad things used to be: http://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/17/us/texas-judge-eases-sentence-for-killer-of-2-homosexuals.html

    But that doesn’t happen any more. And of course adding hate crimes on to murder does nothing really. It would come in handy if someone is committing acts of violence and vandalism for the purposes of threatening or harassing people. But even though sorts of crimes are prosecuted these days. So personally I think the whole hate crimes legislation was a day late and a dollar short. It’s not something I think we should be spending a lot of time on. And I was a bit perturbed when that’s what Congress focused on in 2009 instead of the DADT repeal or a national nondiscrimination bill.

    • posted by Jorge on

      For those unfamiliar here’s a refresher on how bad things used to be:

      Others have suffered worse terror, but you can actually measure the difference, so that’s rather sickening.

      And I was a bit perturbed when that’s what Congress focused on in 2009 instead of the DADT repeal or a national nondiscrimination bill.

      Sorry, but I don’t live in a safe enough area to agree.

  5. posted by TJ on

    The maximum was 80 years, so 40 ain’t the maximum. However, it can be justice…if he actually serves his time.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      Georgia violent crime sentencing/release statistics suggest that he will be incarcerated for about 40-45% of his sentence, or between 15 and 20 years.

      • posted by TJ on

        Which I think is too short a sentence.

        • posted by Jorge on

          I’m a bit of a bleeding heart when it comes to criminal sentencing. I’m not sure how much of a difference in punishment there is between something like 15 years and 25 years. If you have good behavior, rehabilitation and remorse, you have reduced the risk to the community, and have the ability to monitor with a parole officer, then 15-20 sounds about right. Violent hate crimes don’t always come from criminals with long rap sheets.

          Many people worry about recidivism, and I do think we should consider what happens when we release violent felons who have no rehabilitation whatsoever. In that case 40 years is a good maximum sentence.

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        Violent hate crimes don’t always come from criminals with long rap sheets.

        Probably true, but perhaps irrelevant.

        Studies of hate crime offenders suggest that while only a small minority are “mission haters” (that is offenders who are pathologically committed to hate in a way that it becomes their life mission, and who are often affiliated or aligned with hate groups) a high percentage of offenders are young men whose actions stem from psychological factors that many predict continued future violence.

        Jack Levin, a professor at Northeastern who has studied hate crime offenders, describes the latter group this way:

        “Almost always he, and it is almost always a male committing these crimes, was abused in childhood and been forced to suffer,” said Levin, who has published several studies on hate offenders with his Northeastern colleague, Jack McDevitt. “He may feel inferior,” Levin continued. “As he grows up he may learn to compensate but often not in a socially acceptable way. He hates out of a profound need to feel good about himself and to feel powerful as a result of how he was treated as a child.” These hate offenders, says Levin, often look for any minority to harm so that they can feel better about themselves. “If they can’t find someone Jewish, they would be glad to bash someone who is black or Muslim or gay or disabled or homeless,” said Levin. Levin adds that hate is learned from an early age. “People learn hate and prejudice the way they learn society’s most cherished values,” he said.

        In other words, life’s “losers” who scapegoat to take the pressure off.

        You probably have more contact with prisons and prisoners than I do, Jorge (my first-hand knowledge of prisoners comes mostly from offenders who have been released and whom I work with in other contexts, and I have scant personal knowledge of prisons, other than occasionally visiting), but I am not at all convinced that prison life, dominated as it is by affiliation groups and internally controlled by violence, is likely to lessen violent tendencies in men with such a profile.

        It is also because of the profile that I don’t think that hate crimes laws are likely to serve as an effective deterent (see my earlier comment above). It seems to me that we would be better served by working to reduce societal prejudice as a “cherished value”.

        Despite strong and persistent efforts to scapegoat gays and lesbians by the wing-nut conservative Christian anti-gay industry (think FRC, AFA, Liberty Counsel, et al), we are headed in that direction. Most recent polling shows that Americans outside the committed anti-gay core aren’t listening to the anti-gay crowd nearly as much as they used to (scroll down past the election stuff and get to the more extensive discussion of LGBT issues, such as marriage, so-called “religious freedom” and “bathroom bills”). That’s quite positive.

        • posted by Jorge on

          You probably have more contact with prisons and prisoners than I do, Jorge

          You’re in the same boat I’m in. I did have a prison write back once; it shocked the conscience. But they confirmed exactly what I asked: did they endeavor to rehabilitate him.

          but I am not at all convinced that prison life, dominated as it is by affiliation groups and internally controlled by violence, is likely to lessen violent tendencies in men with such a profile.

          I’m not so sure about that when the first incarceration is such a long one (but then again I only pay attention to the stories about people in and out of prison). I think there’s other factors at play. Do prisoners even think about trying to present a good case to parole boards? I would think some do and some don’t.

  6. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Not sure what a hate crime statute would have added, but support for hate crime laws is high on the LGBT political priority list. Others point out that it’s better to punish actions, especially heinous actions as in this case, and not prioritize some forms of hate (i.e., group-directed animus) above others in terms of the severity of the punishment imposed.

    The theory of hate crime laws is that sentence enhancements deter bias-motivated crime. I doubt that, to be blunt. People who commit hate crimes are marginal at best, and unlikely to be making the kind of cost/benefit analysis that the theory assumes. Almost certainly, people who commit serious violent crimes (like the Georgia example) are unlikely to be swayed by deterrence factors.

    It seems to me that hate crimes bills do serve a purpose, however, by enhancing the penalties for bias-motivated non-violent crimes, such as property damage (think defacement of synagogues and mosques, homes and business), in effect converting relatively minor crimes into more serious crimes in order to impress the danger of bias-motivation on the society as a whole. Whether or not this is a proper government purpose is something we can debate .

    It also seems to me that federal hate crime laws serve as a backstop in cases where local/state authorities blow off a bias-motivated crime, refusing to arrest and/or prosecute at all, or cutting a deal to minimize sentencing below norms, as happens with sufficient frequency to be a problem in some areas of the country.

    Notwithstanding confusion on the right about the nature and effect of hate crime laws, hate crime laws are distinct from laws against hate speech in that hate crime laws enhance penalties for criminal conduct in bias-motivated crimes, while hate speech laws criminalize a category of speech. Notwithstanding confusion on the right about the 1st Amendment, hate speech laws conflict with the 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech, and have been repeatedly and consistently overturned as unconstitutional unless carefully tailored and constrained (think Westboro Baptist laws, which were all the rage a few years ago). Right rhetoric conflates hate crimes and hate speech with an unnerving frequency (as in the FRC’s insistence that preachers are at risk of being herded into boxcars for preaching against the abomination), and should not.

    With respect to “support for hate crime laws … on the LGBT political priority list“, I would suggest that there is a reason, and a good reason. According to FBI statistics 2008-2014, while LGBT’s are not the most common target of hate crimes (Jews continue to enjoy that honor, with 84.9 hate crimes per 100,000, gays and lesbians coming in second with 66.9 per 100,000), gays and lesbians are the most common target of violent hate crimes (35.6/100,000, in contrast to 13.9/100,000 for Muslims, 11.2/100,000 for African-Americans, 7.8/100,000 for Jews, and so on down the line). ‘Mo-haters seem to be a violent lot, and attacks are not confined to rural areas of the country where the crimes can be ignored by urban gays and lesbians. So it should be no surprise that hate crimes laws are a priority.

  7. posted by TJ on

    In 1990 the Federal government started collecting statistics on gay bashings, not easy task. It was one of the classier policy decisions of then President Bush.

    In the 1980s, Congress had held some hearings on gay bushings, but I guess collecting statistics wasn’t viable until the 1990s.

  8. posted by wilberforce on

    I don’t know why you all try to argue with stephen. he’s obviously bucking for a regular spot on fox news. the blame liberals for everything meme is his stock in trade, so it’s silly to even address it.

    • posted by Jorge on

      Because Fox News is Fair and Balanced. It challenges conservative orthodoxies and presents both points of view. You’re complaining because these social movements deign to exist in the first place, but there is a force of evil that they oppose. It is necessary to temper the reaction.

  9. posted by Doug on

    “It challenges conservative orthodoxies and presents both points of view.”

    That would be the ‘far right’ and ‘alt right’.

    • posted by Jorge on

      If you watched Fox News, you would not make such an ignorant statement.

      I have no idea what is meant by the alt right.

      • posted by Doug on

        Apparently you and Trump are the only ones who don’t know what the alt right is and he just hired the self acknowledged leader.

        • posted by Jorge on

          It appears you don’t know what it is, either.

      • posted by TJ on

        I watch Fox News. When its not acting like the GOP Pravda, its trying to frame every possible issue into a right-wing versus alt. right wing narrative.

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        I have no idea what is meant by the alt right.

        Learn.

  10. posted by Houndentenor on

    The conversation about “hate crimes” is usually about violent crimes, but those are already come with severe sentences. Where hate crimes attachments matter is with petty crimes. There’s a big difference between spray painting your initials on the side of a bridge and spray painting a swastika on the doors of a synagogue, and the law should recognize that.

    • posted by TJ on

      also – again – if the amount of time the guy actually serves is significantly less than 40 years, I would say that something is seriously wrong with the criminal justice system….but I already knew that.

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