Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[-CC-]

Speaking of bullying, anyone else hear about this Sweden United bullshit? Basically, a bunch of Swedish metal bands got together and wrote a shitty metalcore single about bullying with hilariously bad songwriting and self-pitying lyrics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fK7V9UBfJ8

Horrible song, but wow talk about nostalgia! Hearing Martin Westerstrand and Zak Tell again after 16 years brought back memories

 

[Dak]

Cyth pretty much answered for me.

You cannot charge people for motive and you cannot charge people for crime potential. No wonder the justice system, all the way down to peer juries are so fucked up with attitudes such as those presented here in defense of the "hate crime" tag.

When I said all crimes are "hate crimes" I meant all crimes against another human are hateful by default.

 

[Einherjar86]

Intent and motive are extremely important. You cannot only consider the end result of a crime, example: a robber has murdered his victim in three separate scenario's.

S1: Motive: "I wanted his money, he was loaded and at an atm - yeah I took that chance. If he didn't fight back I prob wouldn't have accidentally fired my weapon..."

S2: "Those Jews always have money, so it was no surprise he had a fat stack of cash leaving that atm; and let's face it, one less Jew in the world isn't a bad thing."

S3: "He just wanted a hug... so I gave him one! And he gave me flowers! He told me to have them... and then he left me... told me to run away..."

But before the crime was committed, what other punishable act do we have? I'm not condoning racist/bigoted beliefs, but the fact remains that we can't punish people who harbor them just because they do. It simply isn't feasible or plausible. Before the crime you're describing occurred, all we have to go on are people's supposed "motives" (i.e. beliefs). However, none of these stand alone as justifiable reasons for legal reprimand. Why do they suddenly become important when coupled with the crime committed? My problem with it is that it punishes people strictly for their beliefs (not saying those beliefs are laudable or even understandable, but that they have an individual right to harbor them).

And thanks Dodens for posting that long list of the argument we've already had.

 

[Pessimism]

Your examples do not support the claim that some kind of racially-biased ideological motivation is relevant to how we categorize what are, on the face of it, basically the same crime. All that your examples show is that a person's mental state is relevant to determining the degree of moral responsibility we'd want to attribute to them. But there is clearly something else going on when we're talking about hate crimes. A better set of examples would be ones in which, in the various cases, the perpetrator's level of moral responsibility is already determined and the same in all cases, yet the motivation for committing the crime is different. Your cases address a completely different issue. They do not specifically speak to the issue of hate crimes.

I kindly disagree, because through each scenario it should be easily identifiable which case is the hate crime (HINT: S2). Perhaps I should have thrown in the premise "each scenario pans out in the exact same fashion, a man walks up to another at an atm, takes his money, and then kills the being who was just robbed". That way you can say that in the end, the crime itself is exactly the same. This way, it should be extremely obvious that I was indeed trying to show that mental states are important, specifically because each case carries different legal consequences for the robber/victim. We have to remember that yes, someone got the royal shaft end of the deal, but the murder.death.kill man is still a human being, and must be tried according to the differentiated facts.

A better set of examples would be ones in which the perpetrator's level of moral responsibility is already determined and the same in all cases, yet the motivation for committing the crime is different.

So you want an example of a situation where all potential robbers/killers are acting in response to some causally determined factors which would put each one's moral responsibility on par with another? I have to ask what "moral responsibility" could possibly be determined between three separate people in an example (as each has a fully different set of experiences, motivations, reasoning, and other environmental forces against them). It could work with the same person reacting three different ways, but then to say that they were each causally constrained to the hypothetical path we've placed them in hardly seems legitimate (as technically they would be three separate people - [Tangent: sorry Kripke :/]).

I guess it would be easier to just ask you to clarify. PWEASE!?

 

[Pessimism]

Cyth pretty much answered for me.

You cannot charge people for motive and you cannot charge people for crime potential. No wonder the justice system, all the way down to peer juries are so fucked up with attitudes such as those presented here in defense of the "hate crime" tag.

For starters, let's ditch the "system is fucked" mentality - we all know it, the only difference is we think it for different reasons. Since these reasons are so varied, let's just skip this entire point.

You do not charge people for motive, just like you don't charge people for potential crimes - this isn't minority report god dammit. The quote below should clear this up.

In law, especially criminal law, a motive is the cause that moves people to induce a certain action. Motive, in itself, is not an element of any given crime; however, the legal system typically allows motive to be proven in order to make plausible the accused's reasons for committing a crime, at least when those motives may be obscure or hard to identify with.
The law technically distinguishes between motive and intent. "Intent" in criminal law is synonymous with mens rea, which means no more than the specific mental purpose to perform a deed that is forbidden by a criminal statute, or the reckless disregard of whether the law will be violated.[citation needed] "Motive" describes instead the reasons in the accused's background and station in life that are supposed to have induced the crime.
Motive is particularly important in prosecutions for homicide. First, murder is so drastic a crime that most people recoil from the thought of being able to do it; proof of motive explains why the accused did so desperate an act.

Obviously you should also get into the linked portion, specifically mens rea (and actus rea), but the point of contention I think that is the problem are the misunderstandings of how intent and motive are used. Actus rea refers to the crime itself, whereas mens rea refers to the reasoning behind the act. In this sense mens rea is merely used as a gauge of potential punishment. It makes all the difference between someone plowing there car into a child willingly, and someone doing it on accident (kid ran out in front of the car). My only point is that motive matters, and in a "hate crime", the motive is the only point of distinction.

When I said all crimes are "hate crimes" I meant all crimes against another human are hateful by default.

Yeah I had no idea that's what you meant. I might have accidentally skipped over that, but I don't recall you ever saying that. If this is true then really it's just a case of semantics, in which I would just point out the literal wording of what encompasses a hate crime and the pro's and con's for such a law. Obvious con's include the inhibiting of free speech and the notion that we are free to hold our own beliefs (no matter how fucked up they are) by means of our social contract (I'm strictly going by this interpretation right now, because if we bring in anything else it's just going to get confusing). Of course, in that regard we can always look at the supreme courts recent interpretation of how beliefs and speech are not infringed when regarding motive and intent. Then the argument becomes not one of semantics, but accepted ontological & epistemic premises which in turn should give us our interpretations on how we view and react to the world (i.e. the root of your beliefs).

But before the crime was committed, what other punishable act do we have? I'm not condoning racist/bigoted beliefs, but the fact remains that we can't punish people who harbor them just because they do. It simply isn't feasible or plausible. Before the crime you're describing occurred, all we have to go on are people's supposed "motives" (i.e. beliefs). However, none of these stand alone as justifiable reasons for legal reprimand. Why do they suddenly become important when coupled with the crime committed? My problem with it is that it punishes people strictly for their beliefs (not saying those beliefs are laudable or even understandable, but that they have an individual right to harbor them).

And thanks Dodens for posting that long list of the argument we've already had.

You must have actus rea in order to use mens rea, so I'm not sure what you are going on about. The only reason it is important is because that is the way we set up the idea of a binding social contract 100's of years ago. Again though, I think the above clarified it a bit more. Let me try to find the literal reasoning as to why people are not being punished for their beliefs when it comes to hate crimes, then maybe we can all complain about whether or not the supreme court were correct or incorrect.

 

[Pessimism]

A brief history of challenges and changes to the hate crime statute, and what is and isn't protected

Also, this is an interesting tango.

 

[Dak]

Obviously you should also get into the linked portion, specifically mens rea (and actus rea), but the point of contention I think that is the problem are the misunderstandings of how intent and motive are used. Actus rea refers to the crime itself, whereas mens rea refers to the reasoning behind the act. In this sense mens rea is merely used as a gauge of potential punishment. It makes all the difference between someone plowing there car into a child willingly, and someone doing it on accident (kid ran out in front of the car). My only point is that motive matters, and in a "hate crime", the motive is the only point of distinction.

Accidental "crimes" vs intentional crimes with differing motives are not even close to the same thing. Apples and oranges. I don't see how anything in your post supports a pro-hate crime position.

 

[Pessimism]

The original problem was

"Why does a particular motive make a crime worse"

I answered.

You said:

The end result was the same, a robbery was committed. The guy isn't "more robbed" because it was racially motivated, or "less robbed" if it wasn't. That the motive was different doesn't matter one damn bit.

I answered this too.

You said:

"You cannot charge people for motive and you cannot charge people for crime potential."

I answered this pretty in depth: you physically can't do that.


Then you said:

When I said all crimes are "hate crimes" I meant all crimes against another human are hateful by default."

Which I challenged your assumption that all crimes must be hateful in nature by using a new examples using both a motive and a lack of a motive in a new manner: a child being hit by a car. In said example an illegal act was committed (killing a child), yet you could easily distinguish which crime was far worse and would be punished more severely.

Then you say

"Accidental "crimes" vs intentional crimes with differing motives are not even close to the same thing."

Earlier you were saying that a crime with two differing motives were the same crime when you get right down to it. Now an accidental crime, which can be shown as a something illegally done without motive (prior examples: hitting a child, discharging a weapon), is completely different when considering the causal effects of the crime itself? This is nothing more than a reversal of your position and a bad contradiction! A crime is not just a crime - this has been the entire point of the argument!






The only two points that really held any sway were these:
Cyth:

We generally don't think that something ought to be prohibited on the basis of its effect on somebody's sense of identity or self-esteem. Lots of things I could say or non-violent things I could do would tend to have a similar effect. But we wouldn't want those things to be prohibited on that basis. Since we already prohibit violent acts and property destruction, then why is the consideration about identity and self-esteem a reason for creating some special category of violent acts and property destruction in the law? We already have a perfectly good basis for prohibiting those things. Why is it legitimate to use reasons for singling these acts out when those reasons usually aren't considered legitimate bases for making law?

His point was that if we already have something that is illegal being done, why add bullshit on top of it? The only answer that I can even muster, other than general psychological research (aka the backlash such acts could have on a person/community), is because in the instances of racially/gender-biased/etc. crimes is that they violate the general principle of equality that all men are equal under the law and are to be treated equally, and any being that tries to tear that fabric down with vicious acts which are shown to entirely isolate a group of given people and distinguish them from the rest of the population, is wrong. Now you can argue the philosophical grounds of whether or not that is a good enough reason to justify laws on or what not, but the fact is that this is currently one of the held notions that law is based on. If you have a problem with that, then you have a problem with the entire notion of what this country has ideally been working toward for years and years and years.

Another good point was this:
Einherjer:

This is stupid. How can you truly tell what the motivation for a crime is? People can claim all they want. A black man can rob a white man at gunpoint and say "I wanted his money," but that doesn't mean he doesn't harbor racist tensions against white people.

This was good because it brought up how you distinguish claims and whether or not first amendment right can be violated by holding such views. In one of the links I posted there are specific cases where the motive was determined to be racial in nature, but the punishment was not based on the motive, merely the act (example: burning a cross on someone's lawn. Motive: Racial; charged with: destruction of property/possible endangerment of children. Is the racial bias added into the sentence? NO - not initially at least (this is where you should have a problem, if any). Each state has a different set of statutes which may increase the severity of a sentence by one level (turning a 4th degree action into a 3rd). As mentioned, the goal is to keep a heterogeneous society (that was originally built on inequality) on equal grounds. To some, the additional punishments of an increased statute may be considered unconstitutional - AND THAT is where the argument should stem, not from the fact that motive and bias should not be used in the court of law, because it can be used, and is used both legally and logically.

 

[Dak]

Earlier you were saying that a crime with two differing motives were the same crime when you get right down to it. Now an accidental crime, which can be shown as a something illegally done without motive (prior examples: hitting a child, discharging a weapon), is completely different when considering the causal effects of the crime itself? This is nothing more than a reversal of your position and a bad contradiction! A crime is not just a crime - this has been the entire point of the argument!

The absence of a motive vs. differing motives, are apples to oranges. Is that more clear for you?

 

[Pessimism]

I already brought that up too. See SC1 vs. SC2 in one of my prior posts. One could also be a hardass and state that as long as there is a difference between two motives (one being mandatory in this instance that is motivated by some sort of bias), it doesn't matter whether the other motive is absent or merely different; they equate to the same thing: a difference when compared to a motivated crime.

 

[Dak]

Accidental discharge during an armed robbery =/= running over a kid who darts out in front of you.

Edit: Any discharge from a firearm without it being due to mechanical malfunction/failure (which basically never happens) is the fault of the user. In the case of an armed robbery, intent to use must be assumed, and "accidental discharge" must be disallowed as a legitimate defense. Pointing a loaded gun at someone is intent to kill.

 

[cookiecutter]

The blacks and gays have it so good. You can't even kill them without getting extra time in prison!

 

[Pessimism]

Accidental discharge during an armed robbery =/= running over a kid who darts out in front of you.

Edit: Any discharge from a firearm without it being due to mechanical malfunction/failure (which basically never happens) is the fault of the user. In the case of an armed robbery, intent to use must be assumed, and "accidental discharge" must be disallowed as a legitimate defense. Pointing a loaded gun at someone is intent to kill.

Bullshit, I myself have seen a full AK magazine pop at the center due to bad ammunition - everyone can argue that that is hardly a flaw by the user (especially from a veteran who has 17 years experience firing a multitude of weapons). Although failures are rare, they are certainly not impossible.

Also, no one has argued fault in this instance (as it is obvious where fault would lie), just that accidents exist - this is where mens rea must be thrown into the discourse to ultimately settle on a form of punishment. Intent must be demonstrated and never assumed in the court of law; that is the entire point of innocent until proven guilty. The point in this specific instance is that there is a severe difference between opening fire on somebody and having your gun fire because someone tried to wrestle it from your grip.

And accidental discharge = accidentally hitting a kid when trying to make the argument that there are in fact instances where accidents happen. Your points are still in contention by the way.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Dak, I think you mean well most of the time but you are much too black and white on certain subjects.

and IMHO, I also think the word hate confuses you. I digress.

 

[Dak]

Bullshit, I myself have seen a full AK magazine pop at the center due to bad ammunition - everyone can argue that that is hardly a flaw by the user (especially from a veteran who has 17 years experience firing a multitude of weapons). Although failures are rare, they are certainly not impossible.

Well of course failures do happen, but they are an extreme rarity.

Also, no one has argued fault in this instance (as it is obvious where fault would lie), just that accidents exist - this is where mens rea must be thrown into the discourse to ultimately settle on a form of punishment. Intent must be demonstrated and never assumed in the court of law;

If you attempt any crime and back yourself with threat to use deadly force, and do use it, whether or not you "really meant to" is a bullshit arguement that is really nothing but evidence (that it happened) vs what the defendent says.

that is the entire point of innocent until proven guilty. The point in this specific instance is that there is a severe difference between opening fire on somebody and having your gun fire because someone tried to wrestle it from your grip.

If someone points a gun at me and I try to fight them and still wind up getting shot, is no different than if they had just shot me.

And accidental discharge = accidentally hitting a kid when trying to make the argument that there are in fact instances where accidents happen. Your points are still in contention by the way.

The only way accidental discharge = accidentally running over is if the loaded gun was not being intentionally pointed at the victim with threat to shoot, IE I was shooting at a gun range and some idiot runs across the range as I shoot.

Edit: @ Jimmy: Actually, in this instance the disagreement is because I don't give two shits about "black and white"

 

[Cythraul]

I kindly disagree, because through each scenario it should be easily identifiable which case is the hate crime (HINT: S2).

Yeah, I know that there was a clearly identifiable hate crime in one of your examples. I wasn't denying that.

Perhaps I should have thrown in the premise "each scenario pans out in the exact same fashion, a man walks up to another at an atm, takes his money, and then kills the being who was just robbed". That way you can say that in the end, the crime itself is exactly the same.

I assumed that's what you had in mind.

This way, it should be extremely obvious that I was indeed trying to show that mental states are important, specifically because each case carries different legal consequences for the robber/victim.

Carries different legal consequences or should carry different legal consequences? Those are two different questions and I take the latter to be the question we're discussing in this thread, and I'm denying that hate crimes should carry different legal consequences.

We have to remember that yes, someone got the royal shaft end of the deal, but the murder.death.kill man is still a human being, and must be tried according to the differentiated facts.

I understand that mental states should be regarded as relevant in some way when prosecuting a crime. Clearly somebody's mental state should be taken into account when we're assigning moral responsibility (blameworthiness). Your examples only showed that mental states are relevant to assigning moral responsibility. They were designed to show the relevance of mental states in categorizing crimes, but they don't show exactly what you apparently want them to show. Let's look at the examples again:

S1: guy shoots other guy accidentally.
S2: guy shoots other guy intentionally and has a racist motive for doing so.
S3: guy is insane and shoots other guy.

Your examples clearly run together two completely different issues. The first issue is whether the guy who shot the other guy is morally responsible for his action. The other issue is whether the guy's racist motive in S2 is relevant to what we ought to charge him with. You made the cases different in a way that clearly demonstrates how a criminal's mental state is relevant to how treat what they've done, but the way in which it is clearly relevant does not support the case for hate crime legislation. In S2 the guy is clearly morally responsible for his action regardless of whether or not he had a racist motive. In S1 it's less clear that he's morally responsible because according to the scenario he shot the other guy accidentally. In S3 it's even less clear that the guy is morally responsible for his action since he is insane. But what do these differences have to do with the issue of hate crimes? Your examples are a rhetorical trick. What you've done is contrast the cases in two different ways. In S1 and S3 the shooter's mental state is such that his moral responsibility for the crime is unclear. In S2 the shooter's mental state is such that he is clearly morally responsible for the crime and his crime was also racially motivated. But that's deceptive; you're getting us to think that racial motivation is relevant to how we treat a crime by contrasting the cases in such a way that we do find the shooter's mental state relevant in all three cases, but not because there was racial motivation in one of the cases. The reason we find his mental state relevant in all three cases is because in two of the cases it's not clear that he's morally responsible for his action whereas in one of the cases he clearly is morally responsible (solely because his action was intentional in that case) and in that latter case you've conveniently added in the feature that he was racially motivated. A more honest set of examples would be the following:

S2: guy intentionally shoots other guy and his action was racially motivated.

S2*: guy intentionally shoots other guy and his action was not racially motivated.

But the above examples would not have had the effect you wanted to get out of your examples, because we would have looked at them and said "Yeah, we know that there are cases like this. So what? The relevance of that fact is precisely what we're arguing about."

 

[Badbird]

I got a long rant on Public Schools.


Fuck you for destroying most kids. You don't know how bad we become.


Fuck you for rewriting history. Don't ever take out legends like THOMAS JEFFERSON out again in your textbooks.


Fuck you for still thinking that mainstreaming Special Education kids is bad. Some kids in those class seem out of place when it comes to their learning skills. Just because they have add doesn't mean they can't be in a normal class.


Fuck you for making kids fear more than learn.

 

[Pessimism]

Ah, thank you for your clarification Cyth; not sure why I wasn't understanding what you were trying to get across before. As for the rhetorical trickery, I was only trying to show intent and why it matter in regards to the whole "hey it doesn't matter the motive, the crime happened and that is what's important" route with the scenarios. Your examples are perfect when we take into moral accountability, unfortunately though I was not taking that into account just because when we bring up a system of morality, we really need to define said system (I figured we would all just avoid that mess and stick with contractual/social obligations - like don't kill people and etc.) Not everyone holds certain truths, and I just wanted to avoid any moral talk aside from what is typically included via contractual obligation. I find it best when concerning law to find something that is all inclusive, and most people for some reason get angry when secular ethical premises are brought up (I have no idea why either).

 

[Einherjar86]

I got a long rant on Public Schools.


Fuck you for destroying most kids. You don't know how bad we become.


Fuck you for rewriting history. Don't ever take out legends like THOMAS JEFFERSON out again in your textbooks.


Fuck you for still thinking that mainstreaming Special Education kids is bad. Some kids in those class seem out of place when it comes to their learning skills. Just because they have add doesn't mean they can't be in a normal class.


Fuck you for making kids fear more than learn.

Do you think we should privatize education?

 

[Badbird]

Not really but they should fix the public education though.