t is death by lethal injection (5).Every day in the United States someone is attacked on the basis of his or her race, religious affiliation, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation among other things. These attacks often take the form of verbal harassment but some end in violent assault or death. Recent studies indicate a rise in the number of “bias” or “hate” crimes since 1985 (4). Congress has defined hate crimes as “a crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim, or in the case of property crime, the property that is the object of the crime, because of the actual or perceived race, color, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any person” (1). Valerie Jenness and Ryken Grattet claim that “hate crime” have become a highly visible social problem that continues to garner national attention and elicit community activism (2). When, however, did the concept of “hate crimes” evolve? It was not until the late 1970’s that lawmakers in the United States began responding to a perceived escalation of racial, ethnic, religious, and other forms of intergroup conflict with a novel legal strategy: the criminalization of hate-motivated intimidation and violence. As a result of this strategy, most state legislatures passed at least one piece of “hate crime” legislation in the late 1980’s and into the 1990’s. Such legislation was justified by the harassment and intimidation, assault, and destruction of property that was found to be particularly dangerous and socially disruptive when motivated by bigotry (3). The first hate crime law was passed in California in 1978, and since then hate crimes statues have taken many forms, including statues prescribing criminal penalties for civil rights violations, specific “ethnic intimidation” and “malicious harassment” statues, and provisions for...
