Tag Archives: Hate Crimes

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Troubling Signals On Free Speech

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

It was nice to hear Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton say on October 26, "I strongly disagree" with Islamic countries seeking to censor free speech worldwide by making defamation of religion a crime under international law.

But watch what the Obama administration does, not just what it says. I’m not talking about its attacks on Fox News. I’m talking about a little-publicized October 2 resolution in which Clinton’s own State Department joined Islamic nations in adopting language all-too-friendly to censoring speech that some religions and races find offensive.

The ambiguously worded United Nations Human Rights Council resolution could plausibly be read as encouraging or even obliging the U.S. to make it a crime to engage in hate speech, or, perhaps, in mere "negative racial and religious stereotyping." This despite decades of First Amendment case law protecting such speech.

To be sure, the provisions to which I refer were a compromise, stopping short of the flat ban on defamation of religion sought by Islamic nations, and they could also be construed more narrowly and innocuously. It all depends on who does the construing.

Is it "negative stereotyping" to say that the world’s most dangerous terrorists are Islamists, for example? Many would say yes.

I sketch below how the resolution could be construed to require prosecuting some offensive speech and how it could be used in the long run to change the meaning of our Constitution and laws, based on doctrines developed by legal academics including Obama appointee Harold Koh, the State Department’s top lawyer.

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Opening Argument – ‘Hate Crimes’ and Double Standards

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Consider three criminal cases.

No. 1: Christopher Newsom and his girlfriend, Channon Christian, both students at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, were carjacked while on a dinner date in January, repeatedly raped (both of them), tortured, and killed. His burned body was found near a railroad track. Hers was stuffed into a trash can. Five suspects have been charged. The crimes were interracial.

No. 2: Three white Duke lacrosse players were accused in March 2006 of beating, kicking, choking, and gang-raping an African-American stripper, while pelting her with racial epithets, during a team party.

No. 3: Sam Hays bumped against Mike Martin in a crowded bar, spilling beer on Martin’s "gay pride" sweatshirt. Martin yelled, "You stupid bastard, I should kick your ass." Hays muttered, "You damned queer" and threw a punch, bloodying Martin’s lip.

Now the quiz.

Which of these would qualify as a federal case under a House-passed bill — widely acclaimed by editorial writers, liberal interest groups, law enforcement officials, and many others — expanding federal jurisdiction to prosecute "hate crimes"?

Bonus question: Why have the interracial rape-torture-murders in Knoxville been completely ignored by the same national media that clamor for more laws to stop hate crimes — the same media that erupted in a guilt-presuming feeding frenzy for months over the far less serious Duke lacrosse charges, which were full of glaring holes from the start and turned out to be fraudulent?

The answers.

The interracial Knoxville rape-murders would probably not qualify as hate crimes. The reason is that although the murderers were obviously full of hate, it cannot be proven that they hated their victims because of race. (Or so say police.)

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“Hate Crimes” and Double Standards

by Stuart Taylor, Jr

The Atlantic

Consider three criminal cases.

No. 1: Christopher Newsom and his girlfriend, Channon Christian, both students at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, were carjacked while on a dinner date in January, repeatedly raped (both of them), tortured, and killed. His burned body was found near a railroad track. Hers was stuffed into a trash can. Five suspects have been charged. The crimes were interracial.

No. 2: Three white Duke lacrosse players were accused in March 2006 of beating, kicking, choking, and gang-raping an African-American stripper, while pelting her with racial epithets, during a team party.

No. 3: Sam Hays bumped against Mike Martin in a crowded bar, spilling beer on Martin’s "gay pride" sweatshirt. Martin yelled, "You stupid bastard, I should kick your ass." Hays muttered, "You damned queer" and threw a punch, bloodying Martin’s lip.

Now the quiz.

Which of these would qualify as a federal case under a House-passed bill—widely acclaimed by editorial writers, liberal interest groups, law enforcement officials, and many others—expanding federal jurisdiction to prosecute "hate crimes"?

Bonus question: Why have the interracial rape-torture-murders in Knoxville been completely ignored by the same national media that clamor for more laws to stop hate crimes—the same media that erupted in a guilt-presuming feeding frenzy for months over the far less serious Duke lacrosse charges, which were full of glaring holes from the start and turned out to be fraudulent?

The answers.

The interracial Knoxville rape-murders would probably not qualify as hate crimes. The reason is that although the murderers were obviously full of hate, it cannot be proven that they hated their victims because of race. (Or so say police.)

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Legal Affairs – Should The Feds Prosecute The Cops Who Killed Diallo?

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

The victim was black and unarmed; his assailants, four white cops. The publicity was intense. Public outrage was boiling. The state courts moved the trial out of the racially divided city, where convictions seemed likely, to a quieter, whiter town. And the jury’s verdict-not a single conviction-spread rage through much of the black community.

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Fending Off ‘Fighting Words’

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

When Sen. Jesse Helms last year proposed restrictions on government support for offensive speech, liberals quickly branded him a Neanderthal right-wing censor.

But what about those liberals with censorial tendencies of their own? Are they Neanderthals, too-or some other, more sensitive, species?

It was Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican, who pushed through the Senate last summer a ban on use of federal arts money for "material which denigrates, debases, or reviles a person, group or class of citizens on the basis of race, creed, sex, handicap, age or national origin." (His more widely publicized provision would have cut off money for "obscene or indecent" materials.)

The president of the University of Pennsylvania denounced the Helms proposal as an effort "to cleanse public discourse of offensive material."

But in strikingly similar language, his own university forbids as harassment "any behavior, verbal or physical, that stigmatizes or victimizes individuals on the basis of race, ethnic or national origin … and that… creates an … offensive academic, living or work environment."

The urge to censor campus speech is prompted by dozens of ugly racist incidents that have fouled campuses around the nation. These have included the posting of racist epithets, jokes, and caricatures on signs and bulletin boards, and shameful physical and verbal attacks on minority students and homosexuals.

Vandalism and physical assaults or threats can of course be punished without free-speech qualms. But even purely verbal attacks can also inflict great trauma, especially on minority group members who feel isolated, conspicuous, and unwelcome on overwhelmingly white campuses.