The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“HATE CRIMES” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S10725-S10727 on Oct. 26, 2009.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
HATE CRIMES
Mr. SPECTER. Madam President, I have sought recognition, briefly, to talk about the legislation on hate crimes, which was passed last Thursday as part of the Defense authorization bill, and to note the very different attitude which is present today than was present in 1997, when Senator Kennedy first took the lead in introducing hate crimes legislation, which I cosponsored with him at that time as well as Senators John Chaffee, James Jeffords and Alfonse D'Amato, the only Republicans who appeared on the bill at that time.
There was some substantial opposition, very little appreciation of the effort to expand hate crimes to include sexual orientation and also disability. Even the Washington Post had an editorial on November 17 raising questions about the wisdom of the legislation which we had introduced.
One of the concerns raised by the Post was that:
A victim of a biased-motivated stabbing is no more dead than someone stabbed during a mugging.
It seems to me, that missed the point. But even the Washington Post, at that time, challenged the rationale for expanding hate crimes. The Post also raised a comment about the disturbing aspect of the legislation is the lower threshold for Federal involvement, in any case.
Having had some experience as a district attorney, and knowing the practices of district attorneys having jurisdiction over a county--for example, my job was both the city and county of Philadelphia--that DAs do not have, in some areas, a very broad perspective.
Where the climate for a district attorney, an elected position, is not conducive to pursuing someone who has undertaken something which has a racial bias, a racial motivation or a motivation for a difference in sexual orientation, the cases are not brought.
That is precisely the kind of an area which warrants hate crimes legislation on the Federal level. But it has been a long battle, and the issue went through quite a few conferences. Thanks to the leadership of our distinguished majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, we have persisted. Senator Reid has kept this issue front and center in the Senate, and Senator Leahy, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and I in the past, in 2005-2006 in the 109th Congress, were pushing ahead on hate crimes legislation.
Senator Levin, as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is to be commended for fighting it through and finally getting it through the conference. So it is quite a landmark move that the Congress has finally acted on it as we did last Thursday. There is a recognition that the Post was off base when it said:
A victim of bias-motivated stabbing is no more dead than someone stabbed during a mugging.
That suggests a misunderstanding of hate crimes, as Senator Kennedy and I wrote in an op-ed that:
Random street crimes don't provoke riots; hate crimes can and sometimes do.
A hate crime is broader than simply an attack against a victim, against the African American who was dragged through the streets in a small town in Texas which gave rise to the impetus for hate crimes legislation or the brutal attack on Matthew Shepherd in Wyoming. So this legislation is highly significant.
I ask unanimous consent that the text of the Washington Post editorial of November 17, 1997, and the reply op-ed piece by Senator Kennedy and myself, dated December 1, 1997, be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
The ``Hate Crime'' Problem
Bill Clinton, at a White House conference last week, declared his support for a proposal by Sens. Edward Kennedy and Arlen Specter to broaden federal jurisdiction over that category of violence dubbed ``hate crime.'' Federal law already permits judges to lengthen the sentences of defendants convicted of such crimes, defined as those in which a victim is targeted because of a particular identity. The Hate Crimes Prevention Act would go a step further than merely toughening sentences; it would significantly widen the Justice Department's latitude to prosecute local violent crimes that were motivated by bigotry. The bill is a can of worms.
The proposal is crafted as an amendment to a civil rights statute that makes it a crime to interfere violently with anyone's exercise of certain federally protected activities because of that person's race, religion or ethnicity. This law sometimes has enabled the federal government to prosecute violent civil rights abuses when state authorities were unable or unwilling to do so. The new proposal would add a section explicitly including sexual preference, gender and disability status within the law and allowing the government to prosecute bias-motivated attacks even when the victims are not engaged in a federally protected activity. It would open the door, proponents concede, for certain rapes and domestic violence cases to be prosecuted federally as hate crimes.
Folding sexual preference into the protection of the existing statute is clearly a good idea. The civil rights of gays and lesbians, after all, are sometimes targeted violently, and the federal government's anachronistic lack of authority to punish perpetrators of these assaults should be corrected. The disturbing aspect of the legislation is the lower threshold for federal involvement in any case. The government has an abiding interest in preventing attacks on the civil rights of its citizens. On the other hand, rape, murder and assault--no matter what prejudice motivates the perpetrator--are presumptively local matters in which the federal government should intervene only when it has a pressing interest. The fact that hatred lurks behind a violent incident is not, in our view, an adequate federal interest. The other conditions for federal involvement outlined in the proposal could prove too malleable to the Justice Department's desire to involve itself in a given case. We don't suggest that the proposal would lead to widespread federal involvement in routine criminal matters, but it is too permissive--and for the wrong reason.
The president's White House Conference on Hate Crimes, as it turned out, was less a discussion of these offenses than a kind of pep rally against the dreaded emotion itself.
That's fine as a bully-pulpit exercise, but the federal focus on what are called hate crimes must not wander too far from criminality. While the government has a simple obligation to protect us from crime, its relationship with hatred is necessarily more complicated. Government officials can denounce hatred and pass anti-discrimination laws, but when push comes to shove, most expressions of ugly intolerance are protected by the First Amendment. Proponents of the new measure argue that a swastika painted on a synagogue has a deeper impact on a community than does a routine act of vandalism, and that's true as far as it goes. But the victim of a bias-motivated stabbing is no more dead than someone stabbed during a mugging. Ultimately, we prosecute crimes, not feelings. Guiding how people feel about one another is only marginally a law enforcement concern.
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When Combating Hate Should Be a Federal Fight
(By Edward M. Kennedy and Arlen Specter)
The Post's Nov. 17 editorial criticizing the measure we have introduced on hate crimes reflects a misunderstanding of our proposal to close the gaps in federal law and a failure to recognize the profound impact of hate crimes.
Hate crimes are uniquely destructive and divisive because they injure not only the mediate victim, but the community and sometimes the nation. The Post's contention that a victim of a bias-motivated stabbing is no more dead than someone stabbed during a mugging suggests a distressing misunderstanding of hate crimes. Random street crimes don't provoke riots; hate crimes can and sometimes do.
The federal government has a role in dealing with these offenses. Although states and local governments have the principal responsibility for prosecuting hate crimes, there are exceptional circumstances in which it is appropriate for the federal government to prosecute such cases.
Hate crimes often are committed by individuals with ties to groups that operate across state lines. The Confederate Hammerskins are a skinhead group that began terrorizing minorities and Jews in Tennessee, Texas and Oklahoma a decade ago.
Federal law enforcement authorities are well situated to investigate and prosecute criminal activities by such groups, and the federal government has taken the lead in successfully prosecuting these skinheads.
Hate crimes disproportionately involve multiple offenders and multiple incidents and in such cases, overriding procedural considerations--including gaps in state laws--may justify federal prosecution.
In Lubbock, Tex., three white supremacists attempted to start a local race war in 1994 by shooting three African American victims, one fatally, in three separate incidents in 20 minutes. Under Texas law, each defendant would have been entitled to a separate trial in a state court, and each defendant also might have been entitled to a separate trial for each shooting. The result could have been at least three, and perhaps as many as nine trials, in the state courts, and the defendants, if convicted, would have been eligible for parole in 20 years. They faced a mandatory life sentence in federal court.
Federal and local prosecutors, working together, decided to deal with these crimes under federal laws. The defendants were tried together in federal court, convicted and are serving mandatory life sentences. The victims and their families were not forced to relive their nightmare in multiple trials.
Federal involvement in the prosecutions of hate crimes dates back to the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War. These laws were updated a generation ago in 1968, but they are no longer adequate to meet the current challenge. As a result, the federal government is waging the battle against hate crimes with one hand tied behind its back.
Current federal law covers crimes motivated by racial, religious or ethnic prejudice. Our proposal adds violence motivated by prejudice against the sexual orientation, gender or disability of the victim. Our proposal also makes it easier for federal authorities to prosecute racial violence, in the same way that the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996 helped federal prosecutors deal with the rash of racially motivated church arsons.
The suggestion in the editorial that our bill tramples First Amendment rights is ludicrous. Our proposal applies only to violent acts, not hostile words or threats. Nobody can seriously suggest that the neo-Nazis who murdered Fred Mangione in a Houston nightclub last year because they
``wanted to get a fag'' were engaged in a constitutionally protected freedom of speech.
In addition, hate-crimes prosecution under our bill must be approved by the attorney general or another high-ranking Justice Department official, not just by local federal prosecutors. This ensures federal restraint and that states will continue to take the lead in prosecuting hate crimes.
From 1990 through 1996, there were 37 federal hate crimes prosecutions nationwide under the law we are amending--fewer than six a year out of more than 10,000 hate crimes nationwide. Our bill should result in a modest increase in the number of federal prosecutions of hate crimes.
When Congress passed the Hate Crimes Statistics Act in 1990, we recognized the need to document the scope of hate crimes. We now know enough about the problem, and it is time to take the next step.
As the Lubbock prosecution shows, combating hate crimes is not exclusively a state or local challenge or a federal challenge. It is a challenge best addressed by federal, state and local authorities working together. Our proposal gives all prosecutors another tool in their anti-crime arsenal. The issue is tolerance, and the only losers under our proposal will be the bigots who seek to divide the country through violence.
Mr. SPECTER. An additional comment or two. We have seen times change with respect to don't ask, don't tell. When this was put into operation, it seemed to me at the time--and I have said repeatedly in the intervening decade-plus that don't ask, don't tell has been in effect--that it has outlived its usefulness, its utility. I do not know that it ever had utility, but, if so, it certainly ought to be changed now.
There are men and women, regardless of sexual orientation, who serve with bravery and distinction in the military. Don't ask, don't tell ought to be repealed. There are limits as to what the President may be able to do through an executive order. So where congressional action is warranted, let it be enacted.
On a somewhat similar tone, times have changed with the Defense of Marriage Act since it was enacted back in 1996. Now we have seen the States of Connecticut, Iowa, and Massachusetts have legalized same-sex marriage. It is an issue where attitudes have changed very considerably. I think, just as we were finally able to get hate crimes legislation through, just as it is time to move ahead and move beyond don't ask don't tell, it is time to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.
In the absence of any other Senator right now seeking recognition, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HARKIN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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