Chicago beating doesn’t need to be a hate crime
The nation convulsed in horror last week at a video of black suspects in Chicago torturing and beating a disabled white man, all while broadcasting their barbarity on Facebook Live. One alleged assailant is heard to be yelling “f--- Donald Trump!” and “f--white people!” While the 18-year old special needs man is bound, one of the suspects takes a knife and cuts off a piece of his scalp.
The assailants, two male and two female, were later charged with felony aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. But they were also charged with violating Illinois’ hate crime law, which provides for enhanced penalties.
While no sentient human would defend the heinous actions on that torture video, the hate crime charge is inappropriate in this — or in almost any — case.
Hate crime laws, which now inhabit the regulatory books of virtually every state, transform law enforcement officials into thought police, monitoring the reasons and motivations for criminal actions. If the Chicago Four, for instance, had hated Trump, loathed white people or had disdain for the disabled, they would not be prosecuted for simply having those thoughts. Because those thoughts may have been expressed in this brutal video doesn’t remove the constitutional protection they are afforded for having them.
What hate crime laws actually do is set up a complicated hierarchy for whose safety is valued most. Members of certain groups are afforded more legal protections based on statute. Last session, one Wisconsin lawmaker even introduced a bill to automatically classify harming police officers as a hate crime. In the ongoing debate about whose lives matter most, hate crime laws seek to rank them via state law.
Further, enforcement of hate crime laws is spotty and uneven. According to the FBI, Michigan reported more than three times as many hate crimes (309) as Illinois reported in 2015 (90). Does anyone believe residents of Michigan are three times as hateful as those of Illinois? What constitutes hate is clearly a subjective and capricious determination.
All Americans deserve equal protection under the law; an unspeakable crime such as beating and scalping a disabled person should be prosecuted vigorously regardless of the perpetrators’ motivations or statements in committing the crime. And if the penalty for the acts isn’t stiff enough in the absence of hate crime enhancers, enact stiffer sentences for breaking the law.
The Chicago assault would not have been any less reprehensible had the attackers forgotten to express disdain for white people, Donald Trump or the disabled. As Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said on the Senate floor in 1993, protesting a hate crime provision in a federal crime bill, we should punish conduct but “our speech should be free.”