A Crime Is a Crime, No Matter How the Law Colors It

One of life’s constant challenges is whether to go with our gut instinct or to analyze things to death. I usually follow the latter course, but then again, I have lots of time on my hands.

When something comes along that prompts an immediate and strong gut reaction, I get suspicious. Is it really that obvious? Can there be something more here?

I’m asking myself those questions after reading about what’s being billed as a tough decision for the Orange County district attorney’s office on a “hate-crime” determination.

Would that all decisions were this tough.

As Irvine police explain it, the incident stemmed from a garden-variety traffic confrontation in which an angry passenger got out of his car at an intersection and allegedly threatened the driver of another car with bodily harm. In addition, police said, the alleged assailant, a 23-year-old white El Toro Marine, used ethnic slurs toward the driver, a 60-year-old Korean man. A second confrontation occurred at another intersection and the older man allegedly was shoved to the ground.

Police originally went for misdemeanor assault charges against the younger man, but now have decided to ask the district attorney’s office to consider filing an additional hate-crime charge. The import of that is that, if convicted on that charge, the Marine would face a significantly more serious sentence.

My gut reaction is that this is a no-brainer and somewhat frightening that it’s even being considered. If this is a hate crime, then this is a country of felons and someone had better start building many, many more prisons to house them all.

Am I saying that the Marine had the right to invoke the other man’s ethnicity in the heat of their argument and subsequent scuffling?

Yes, I am.

That doesn’t mean I like it or that I like the Marine if he, in fact, used the slurs. But tacking on jail time because someone resorts to ethnic or racial insults in a heated argument is the product of terrible law.

And, no, I’m not trying to protect my white behind.

While we’re on the subject, I’ve never been in love with the rationale behind hate-crime laws, although I’ve heard persuasive arguments for them. Those arguments include the idea that society should have additional sanctions against crimes committed against specifically targeted minority groups, whether it be based on color, gender or sexual orientation.

In grand sweeping terms, the theory doesn’t bother me but the application always makes me uneasy.

My argument is that any criminal act should be significantly punishable so that no one needs to delve into the perpetrator’s innermost thoughts. Punish the deed, not the thought. Am I any less a criminal if I shoot a black man at random than if I target him for his race?

Burning down a church because its members are black is, by any logical definition, a reprehensible hate crime. Throw the book at whoever does it. But isn’t burning down any church an atrocious act? Is burning down a black Baptist church more criminal than burning down a white Baptist church? Any arson laws on the books ought to be severe enough to properly punish the deed.

Likewise, any law-abiding person would concede that attacking a man on the street because he’s gay is a hate crime. But, as with arson, assault laws should be sufficient to cover that punishment. It’s never been completely clear to me why attacking people for their minority status should be more punishable than attacking anyone else.

An attack on a human being is an attack on a human being.

Where the justice system historically let people down, of course, was in winking at assaults on minorities. That led people to believe they could, literally, get away with murder. And they did.

Hate-crime laws are the mirror-image of that. It’s as though we believe that adding hate-crime sanctions will put the fear of God into people who might be thinking about attacking minorities. And they don’t.

This is a society where minorities still need special protections, but dispensing heavier punishment for criminal acts against them isn’t one of them.

Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer keeping the blindfold on that lady holding the scales of justice. If you commit the crime, you do the time. In her eyes and mine, all victims are created equal.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.