A 'hate crime' is a crime defined as some sort of assault on a person (such as a homosexual or African-American) or property (such as a synagogue) motivated by the perpetrator's hate for that person or object. There have been some emotional cases exploited through the news media in the last decade: The white men in Texas accused of dragging a black man behind their pick-up truck until he died because he was black; Matthew, the Colorado University student who was brutally beaten to death because of his homosexuality; the California man who killed a Filipino postal worker before driving up to a Jewish daycare center and opening fire on the patrons. While all of these crimes were prosecuted and the perpetrator's found guilty and punished to the fullest extent that the law would allow, they are also being utilized to form specific legislation to define hate crimes as 'hate crimes'.
I believe at this time, when crimes are prosecuted and have tags such as 'with special circumstances', it is not necessary to pass specific legislation defining hate crimes. In my opinion, the movement to define 'hate crimes' is a political movement by particular groups to win further funding and media attention to their particular causes. What is unfortunate is that, in recent years, some cities and states have passed legislation defining 'hate crimes'. As long as juries are properly instructed on the type of convictions they may confer, hate crime legislation should be unnecessary.
It is interesting that there are only certain groups that are defined within the pre requisites of what may constitute a hate crime. For instance, crimes that are racially motivated are hate crimes while crimes that are religiously motivated are not. If a child is bullied because he as discovered his predisposition to homosexuality, it is a hate crime. If a child is just bullied by the other kids at school and he then commits a crime such as Columbine, it is not prose...