A black man was chained to a pickup truck and dragged for 2 miles on a remote Texas road, decapitating him. A gay man was beaten and tied to a fence in Wyoming, left in a pose described variously as resembling a scarecrow or Jesus.
Just a few days ago, Frank Caruso Jr., 19, was sentenced in Chicago for beating a then-13-year-old black youth so severely it left him brain-damaged.
After these and other incidents of startling violence, some think the nation’s mood is more conducive than ever for penalizing hate crimes in the strongest possible way.
“It’s been an absolutely horrendous year,” Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said recently.
Yet as Congress rushes toward adjournment this week, it is virtually certain not to pass a bill written by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and others to crack down on hate crimes. While this year’s traumas have undoubtedly ignited renewed interest in hate crimes laws, the notion of tougher sentences for crimes of prejudice clearly remains controversial.
Some of the Kennedy bill’s supporters say privately that the killing of Matthew Shepard, the Wyoming gay student, actually hurt the bill’s chances.
By focusing attention on the gay community’s fierce push for the bill, these activists say, the Wyoming incident prompted the religious right to oppose it with equal fervor.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a strong backer of the federal hate crimes bill, is dismayed that Shepard’s murder did not create enough momentum to push it through.
“I’ve been around legislatures for a long time, and an event like that can galvanize public support and political thinking,” Durbin said. “But unfortunately in this case, we were unable to use this tragic event to prevent others from happening in the future.”
Supporters promise to push the bill with greater vigor next year, when they insist their chances will be better. But the proposal clearly faces tough odds.
“There are quite frankly differing world views that vie at the center of not just this debate but the wider debate on gay rights,” said Arne Owens, spokesman for the Christian Coalition. “One side seeks to preserve traditional morality, and the other side, with a modified view of morality, is attempting to assert a civil right.”
Hate crimes laws, to be sure, are nothing new. They have stirred passions at least since 1968, when Congress first passed a hate crimes statute during a time of frightening racial violence.
That law made it a federal crime to attack someone because of race, color, religion or national origin. It only applied if the assault was aimed at preventing certain federally protected activities, such as voting or going to school.
Kennedy’s bill would add gender, disability and sexual orientation to the mix, and it would allow federal authorities to intervene in a much broader range of situations.
For a brief moment last week after the Wyoming incident, the bill appeared to have a chance. But ultimately, congressional Republicans were reluctant to allow a brutal debate on the topic. President Clinton’s early, outspoken support for the bill probably made it even less appealing to GOP leaders.
Durbin said the inclusion of sexual orientation galvanized the opposition. “Let’s get down to the bottom line: This is all about sexual orientation,” he said.
The fight over hate crimes laws has been simmering for decades. In addition to the federal law, which has not been amended since 1968, 42 states, including Illinois, have statutes that increase the fine or prison time for crimes such as vandalism or assault if the offense was motivated by prejudice.
Civil rights activists support such laws partly for symbolic reasons.
“It is not merely the penalty that is at issue,” Henderson said. “It is the imprimatur of the federal government and the states that a certain kind of activity is so reprehensible and so violative of society’s values that it should be condemned under the law.”
Those who oppose hate crimes legislation say it penalizes certain criminals more harshly essentially because of what they believe–and that, they say, is unconstitutional. Racist beliefs may be abhorrent, these scholars argue, but they are protected by the 1st Amendment.
“If we highlight the distinction between various people’s motives–if we say it is worse to murder someone because you hate them than because you’re obsessed with them–we get into trouble,” said Todd Gaziano, a scholar at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group.
But supporters of hate crimes laws maintain that they punish not specific beliefs but specific offenses and that these offenses are more heinous than others.
Harlan Loeb, Midwest regional counsel for the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, made the point by comparing a vandal who scrawls “I love Sally” on a school building with one who writes “All Jews must die.”
It is the second perpetrator who has committed the much greater crime, Loeb said.
“He has essentially attacked an entire community, rather than just a high school wall,” Loeb said. ” `I love Sally’ is a vandalism, and the victim is the high school or the taxpayer and that’s it. The victim of `All Jews must die’ or `All gays must die’ is the entire community.”
The Supreme Court in 1993 sided with the proponents of hate crimes laws when it unanimously upheld Wisconsin’s hate crimes statute, which provides for enhanced penalties for crimes motivated by bias.
But that has not stopped the debate. The federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court, is on record opposing Kennedy’s bill, saying crimes such as vandalism and murder are better handled by states than federal authorities.
That echoes a favorite argument of hate crimes laws’ opponents.
“Even the best so-called hate crimes laws are redundant, unnecessary and sometimes counterproductive,” Gaziano said. “There is no serious evidence that any state is not prosecuting the underlying acts. All states prosecute murder as murder, assault as assault, battery as battery.”
But in practice, the federal government rarely intervenes in hate crime cases, as supporters of the Kennedy bill note. In 1996, the latest year for which figures are available, federal authorities prosecuted only eight of the 8,759 hate crimes reported across the country, leaving the rest to state officials.
Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said Sunday on CNN that such nationwide legislation is needed to address “situations where the state cannot or will not take action.”
Reno said the legislation would not preempt state action against those involved in hate crimes. The Justice Department would consult with states, she said, and “if the state after consultation cannot do it and says that the federal government should proceed, this is too important for this nation not to let justice take its course.”
As it happens, Illinois would be among the states least affected by a new federal hate crimes law because its statute, passed in 1988, is strong. Cook County officials have won national praise for their energetic pursuit of hate crimes.
“I’m confident in saying that Cook County, Illinois, is the strongest jurisdiction in the country,” Loeb said. “That’s not to say that we respond 100 percent. But in terms of the mechanisms that are in place to confront hate crimes, we have them all.”
Supporters of a new federal law hope they have at least laid the groundwork for better results next year. In addition to various Democrats, Kennedy’s bill has been co-sponsored by a handful of Republicans, including Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and, in the House, Rep. Bill McCollum of Florida.
Still, most congressional Republicans have expressed little interest in hate crimes legislation, as Durbin noted.
“As long as we have the current majority in Congress, it will be difficult to pass this kind of legislation,” the senator said. “But I do believe there are enough moderate Republicans and fair-minded conservatives to put together a winning coalition.”
