A Case for the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act

For the last couple of weeks, I was have been on assignment with my day job up on Capitol Hill, covering the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

Under this bill a “hate crime” will now be defined as: as those motivated by prejudice and based on a victim’s race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

Better known as The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Bill, it is so named because of the murder in 1998 of an openly gay student at the University of Wyoming, who was tortured, tied to a fence and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming. According to testimony at his assailant’s trial, he was attacked because he was gay.

Last week the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act passed the House. The vote was 249 to 175, with most Democrats voting in favor and most Republicans against.

During the hearings and again in the floor debates it was evident to me there was true compassionate concern on behalf of many Democrats to protect LGBT’s and others who have always not been incorporated in other such protections. There was also much vitriolic hysterics from the Republicans about how “It’s all part of the radical homosexual agenda,” to penalize thought, put preachers who preach against homosexuality in jail and create a special class and status for LGBT’s.

The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act won’t put people in jail for what they think or even for what they say, but for what they do. The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act is not a law against thought… but one against actions.

What this bill does mostly is provide federal assistance and funding to those prosecuting crimes of violence motivated by prejudice and based on a victim’s race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability, but it also stands the federal government behind local prosecutors, looking their over shoulders sometimes, making sure they prosecute such crimes to the fullest extent of existing state laws as well.

Because as much as we all wish it were not so…. Justice has not always been forthcoming to some groups of people in all places. Local prosecutors are most times elected officials, at the mercy of their electorate and there was no clearer example of this state of affairs then the Mississippi Burning case of 1964.

That case involved the murders of three civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman in Mississippi.  They were taken to an isolated spot were shot to death. Their car was driven into a swamp and set on fire, and their bodies buried in an earthen dam.

At the time this happened, you really could not get away with killing civil rights worker in most parts of this nation, but local officials in Mississippi, however, showed they were hardly sympathetic to the situation, saw that in some way these three men had asked for whatever they had received by bucking the majority belief in Mississippi at the time that blacks deserved no civil rights and refused to investigate their disappearance.

It was only after the national uproar caused by the disappearance of the civil rights workers forced President Lyndon Johnson to send in the FBI to investigate the case that any justice came at all. After a six-week investigation, the FBI ended up arresting the local sheriff, his deputy and 16 others.

However, even then Mississippi officials refused to prosecute the killers for the murders.

It was not until the US Justice Department charged theses men under the 1870 US Force Act, with conspiring to deprive the three of their civil rights (by murder), did any justice come at all when seven were found guilty. Nevertheless, none of those convicted served more than six years and no one was charged and convicted of any of the actual killings until 2005. It was only after 41 years, when attitudes finally changed enough, that a jury in Mississippi convicted Edgar Ray Killen of three counts of manslaughter, a conviction Killen promptly appealed, claiming that no jury of his peers at the time the crime was committed would have convicted him on the evidence presented.

Fortunately, attitudes did change, and the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the verdict in 2007, but this conviction nor the change in attitude would never have happened if in 1964 the federal government had not stepped in to investigate the crime and shine the light of day on what was going on in Mississippi at the time.

While the arguments that the Hate Crimes law is creating special classes maybe valid in most parts of this country, because most local officials will not tolerate crimes that appear to be motivated by prejudice and based on a victim’s race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. Most judges in most places who tend to throw the book at the perpetrators of such crimes, really won’t need the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act and will only avail themselves of its use to help defray the costs for particularly lengthy cases.

But unfortunately that is not the case everyplace.

In this country, like in 1964 Mississippi, there are places where local attitudes and perception towards groups covered by the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act that are not always very favorable, and some local prosecutors even now, worry about getting a conviction for these types of crimes.

They know they can probably find no juries of peers willing to convict the perpetrators of these crimes because the local attitude say there is no crime because the victim “had it coming anyway”…. they plea-bargain and reduce the severity of the offense just to clear the case, save money and not aggravate their voting constituencies. It is those situations the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act will help address and will not do anything but provide an avenue for equal justice to those aggrieved.

As for creating the thought police… the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act will do nothing of the sort… the White Supremacists can still go around telling anyone who will listen how much they hate the “niggers and the Jews”, Black nationalist can still tell the world how much they hate “whitey and the Jews” and religious leaders can still tell their flocks how much “God hates fags” and is going to send them all to hell one day.

The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act changes none of that and their thoughts and speech will only be limited by the forbearances of their listeners.

The only thing this law may do is possibly shine a few lights in places some may not want to look, or have others look and may make some wonder… just how much of what they have said inspired their friends, fellow travelers and congregants to go out and commit crimes covered by the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act … While they visit their friends, fellow travelers and congregants in prison.

Hopefully… someday attitudes will change everyplace… and the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act and even hate itself, will no longer have a place in our country. One can only hope that day will come soon, but till then there is a need for this bill.

Paula Brooks lives in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. You can visit her Blogger profile here.