Quote:
Originally Posted by DrPhil
"Hateful action" is not a hate crime. A hate crime is a crime that is motivated by hatred toward, and therefore targeting of, a particular group of people/member of a particular group of people.
This is not solely based on the offender and victim being of different demographic characteristics. It is not enough that Zimmerman is Latino (some categorize him as white Hispanic) and Martin is Black. There has to be evidence that Zimmerman was targeting suspects on the basis of race OR was profiling suspects as being "unfamiliar" or "not belonging" because they were nonwhite.
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I understand that. I am clear on the fact that this being called a 'hate crime' is not clear due to the evidence.
All I really want to see is that Florida gets this right and have enough evidence to make sure that the right sentence is passed and also the laws are closely examined so that someone else can safely walk down a street and not have to go through what both families are dealing with now.
And even though there are defined laws NOW that tells us what hate crimes are, it's still messed up how many people before James Byrd and others had to die before they were written...that's all.