I’m faced with an uncomfortable dilemma here.
As any fule kno, when it comes to anti-Semitism, I’m with the Semites — lock, stock and barrel (if necessary). I don’t think I have to prove that to anyone.
I am also steadfastly against the legal practice of attributing mindset and attitude (animus) towards crime: murdering someone in cold blood is terrible; whether the murderer shouts “Die, you Jewish bastard!” or “Bye bye, Jew bitch!” while committing the crime is in my mind irrelevant. There’s no such thing as doubleplusterrible, in other words. The crime should be sufficiently punished according to its severity. (In the second example, are we going to add years onto the sentence for both misogyny and anti-Semitism? Trebleplusterrible?)
Which is why this situation makes me profoundly uneasy:
Federal prosecutors have charged a man from the Bronx with hate crime offenses alleging he assaulted a security guard and a congregant in a racially motivated attack at a Manhattan synagogue last week.
Larry Montes was arrested following the alleged attack at Central Synagogue on Friday and was charged by New York State.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department charged him with two counts of committing hate crimes, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment, and one count of damage to religious property resulting in bodily injury, which carries a maximum 20 years’ imprisonment.
I don’t know whether “damage to religious property resulting in bodily injury” carries a heavier sentence in NYfC than does “damage to [any] property resulting in bodily injury” — I’ll leave that for my Powdered Wig Readers to establish — but it shouldn’t.
Once again, I’m going to restate that my personal inclination is to offer additional protection to, say, synagogues; but I’m not so sure that it should be legal policy.
But given the above, I am also curious to know whether the murder of a White person by a Black person shouting, “Die, cracker!” is punished with the same severity as that of a White person murdering a Black person while shouting “Die, nigger!”
See where all this leads?
Hence my discomfort with the whole issue.
I’m surprised the perp didn’t get a medal and a job from Mandani.
But no doubt he’ll not be receiving more than a slap on the wrist, not in New York.
Now had he attacked a mosque things would of course have gone different. He’d be hunted down and shot dead by “New York’s finest”.
A man committing a crime will always get a heavier sentence than a woman for the same crime. If she killed a man and shouted “Die you pig!” she would likely be completely exonerated.
Maybe the DA, frustrated at not being able to prescribe a blindfold and a last cigarette for Mr. Montes, heaped on charge upon charge. I’m only surprised there was no parking violation.
Off to court to defend my people this morning, so I’ll make it quick.
I have always really disliked the idea of hate crimes. But, that said, we have decided as a society that intent matters, and it is an integral part of our legal system.
That is, we penalize an intentional killing, a heat of passion killing, a reckless killing, and a negligent killing very differently; the difference on the spectrum being death to probation, and almost all of that difference turns on the intent of the actor, not the outcome.
So, knowing that, there isn’t a credible legal argument for opposing it. Plenty of social, public policy, and moral arguments, sure, but not legal. We decided to punish this differently as a society because we feel that different intent warrants different consequences.