Hate crimes on the rise; prevention act bill to legislate

by Nick Luchko staff writer

Hate crimes have had an upswing

1..- in the last couple of years.

The vicious murders of James pl--voByrd and Matthew Shepard were ~t not only attacks on individuals, but against America and our shared values, according to Vice President Al • Gore, who commented on the issue of hate crimes during a recent statement he issued.

Goi.9gall the way back to the era of Nazi war crimes against Jews during the Holocaust, hate crimes have been present.

In 19%, nearly 9,000 hate crimes occurred in the United States, compared to 7,947 incidents in 1995 and 5,932 incidents in 1994, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Now a bill is being reintroduced.

The Hate Crimes Prevention Act would remove needless jurisdictional requirements and give the Department of Justice the power to prosecute hate crimes committed for any reason.

This bill, sponsored by Senators Edward Kennedy, Arlen Spector and Ron Wyden, would expand federal law to include attacks based on gender, disability or sexual orientation.

"Legislation is not going to stop hate crimes, but I am in favor of legislation," Dr. Anthony Tomasco, psychology professor, said. "It is a justice issue."

Current hate crime laws cover attacks on the basis of race, religion, color or national origin. However, there are no federal laws for crimes based on sexual orientation, gender or disability.

The Hate Crime Act would also eliminate a current guideline that requires the prosecutor to prove that the crime occurred while the victim was exercising a federally protected activity. This would include voting and performing jury duty.

Another part of the act was the additional federal authority to investigate and prosecute hate crimes. Offenders could get 10 years to life imprisonment if the crime involves kidnapping, murder or sexual abuse.

'The traditional psychological inadequacies of a person could be why a person takes out so much frustration and anger," Tomasco said ''Perhaps the person was deprived of something in their own life that would also cause this."

The murder of James Byrd, Jr., a black man, in June was an alleged hate crime in which he was beaten unconscious, chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged for miles over rural roads.

Three white men, John William King, Shawn Berry and Lawrence Brewer Jr., were arrested with the crime.

Berry has already given a confession that implicates the other two as the principal assailants. Both King and Brewer had links to white supremacist groups while serving terms in state prison.

This past Monday saw one of Matthew Shepard's killers, Russell Henderson, plead guilty and be sen- tenced to two consecutive life terms.

His guilty plea saved him a jury trial and the possibility of receiving the death penalty.

Last October, Henderson and Aaron McKinney posed as homosexuals and lured Shepard, who was later kidnapped and pistol-whipped. They allegedly proceeded to tie him to a fence and leave him to die. Five days later he did, in a hospital bed.

Henderson has said that he is responsible for some of the act of aggression but he has repeatedly said that he did not partake in the beating of Shepard. That was all McKinney, he says.

McKinney's trial will take place in August. 9000 .,.,.-----------------

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1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 graph by Laura Casamento

This graph shows the number of hate crimes reported to the FBI between the years of 1991-1996.