Why isn't this a hate crime?

Question

Ex-con found guilty of torturing NYC grad student

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080624/ap_on_re_us/grad_student_torture

"An ex-convict was found guilty Tuesday in the rape and torture of a Columbia University graduate student who survived 19 hours of nightmarish sadism in which he scalded her with boiling water and attempted to blind her before trying to burn her to death."

"...made her swallow fistfuls of painkillers, ordered her to gouge out her eyes with scissors, sealed her lips with super glue and gagged her with duct tape before torching her apartment."

Why isn't this a hate crime? Was it just random that he chose a woman to be his victim?

Why does it seem that men are shot with firearms, but women have to go thru pure agony in their deaths???

Isn't this a case of hate? If it was done to a Black person or a g*y person, etc. it would be.

Answer 1

ALL crimes are hate crimes.  The idea that they only have the added element of 'hate' under certain circumstances, is idiotic, meaningless, and ludicrous.

EDIT:  Shiva - you'd be funny if you weren't so pitiful ~ if you shoot the cashier so he/she can't identify you, you have no compassion, sensitivity, or awareness of the carnage you're causing an innocent human being AND their family so you can steal money from yet another innocent victim.  To you that's not hate?  Looks like hate to me.

Answer 2

That's a good point you make.

Answer 3

I am sorry, but I find the term "hate crime" to be ludicrous and even redundant.  I have heard of crimes of passion and  hate crimes... but I believe the only crimes that are committed are out of hate. I have never heard of a crime of indifference. Its just absurd.

Answer 4

You are definitely right that this is a hate crime.  Women should lobby their Congressmen in their states and the Fed to make hate crimes include women.  Problem is that women suffer from so much hate crime, it would be a mammoth law.

Edit:  Thomas

" If he had tried to kill her, simply because she was a woman well then it would be a hate crime."

What other reason do you think he had in committing this crime.  Name one white man who has been subjected to this kind of torture, that was not a prisoner of war?

ALL CRIMES ARE NOT HATE CRIMES.  If I rob a convenience store and shoot the cashier so they cannot identify me, I don't HATE the cashier.

Answer 5

It's appalling, and I hope he becomes the "girlfriend" of a 275-pound murderer in prison, but using gender as a basis for hate crimes would be too tricky. Women are not minorities, and prosecutors would have to start charging every crime that is woman on man or man on woman as a hate crime. The term would lose its meaning.

Answer 6

Mother a heroin addict who wasn't around. Dad was a 17 year old gang member. Lived with his grandmother who was afraid of him. Teachers said he was evil. First arrested for robbery in fifth grade. Shot someone to death when he was 15. Went to prison until 19. Three weeks after getting out he shot someone else twice in the back. After seven years he was released straight from solitary confinement into the community. [He had a record of violence and paranoia in prison.]

Yeah that's a really good idea.

People like his parents shouldn't be allowed to have kids.

People like him should be put down.

Answer 7

Prove it.  Did he have hate propaganda?  Was he known for having a hate of women?  Did he use derogatory comments?

A hate crime is much more than simply a horrendous act.  You have to prove the person targeted the person because of their race, sexual orientation, gender, religion etc.  There is no evidence of this here....no matter how sick and twisted.

And Tracey, you do not have to be a minority to be a victim of a hate crime.  If a straight, middle aged, white, Catholic, man is killed because he either straight, middle aged, white, Catholic or a man, it is a hate crime.

Answer 8

I don't think this was motivated by hate specificially, more his own sadism (which is a fetish) and other such twisted mental problems. So it's not a hate crime, and not all crimes with hate involved would fall under "hate crime" anyway. And there would be no benefit to anyone involved to try to label this a hate crime.

Answer 9

Nothing should be a hate crime. A crime is a crime. Your skin color, gender, or sexual orientation should not make you more valuable.

Answer 10

In order to be a hate crime, there has to be some reason to believe that he did it out of hatred for women. Just because it was done to a woman doesn't mean that his motive was hatred of women. Your reasoning is the kind of reasoning lampooned in an episode of South Park in which one character is accused of committing a hate crime because he got into a fight at school with a black kid. The fight had nothing to do with the fact that the kid was black. The boy who started the fight simply hated that individual person, not all black people.

In the case that you're talking about, maybe the guy only hated that specific woman. Or maybe he's just generally insane and does not necessarily hate women but felt some crazy reason why he thought he had to torture one.

You can't call everything a "hate crime" just because it was done against someone of a different race, gender, class, or whatever than the culprit.

This isn't to say that the case you refer to isn't absolutely awful and sad. But it's not necessarily a hate crime.

Answer 11

What's your point in asking th is question? What does it matter if the victim was as g*y or black? It was wrong in my personal opinion he should be sentence to death. Regardless of the s*x or race of his victim, he deserves to have the same thing happen to him if not worse. Who cares about the what if's? and what does the fashion in which someone is tortured or killed have to do with  anything. There are women who're victims of fatal gunshot wounds just like men. And there are some men who have been proven to suffer agony in their deaths. What's your point?

Answer 12

Its probaly not considered a hate crime, because there was no intent to kill her just due to her gender. If he had tried to kill her, simply becuase she was a woman well then it would be a hate crime.