Friday, April 27, 2007
The very fascinating hate law criteria
This clarification and example from the Alliance Defense Fund's Report on the H.R. 1592 Bill.
Despite the limitation of the new federal offenses to violent crimes against persons, H.R. 1592 could be construed not to limit federal prosecution to violent “hate” crimes. Although not the most likely construction, section 4 of the Act could arguably authorize the Attorney General to prosecute violations of non-violent state or local “hate” crime laws at the request of local officials.3
That would be extremely problematic because some existing state and local “hate” crime laws make “simple assault” or “intimidation” prosecutable offenses.
