Hate-crime debate, again

When a Hispanic man was hospitalized after he was beaten by a group of white men, who police believe targeted their victim based on skin color, an arrest was never made.

No suspects were ever identified after a lesbian, doing door-to-door solicitation in Sugar House for a nonprofit organization, was forced to the ground, kicked in the face and robbed, all while having slurs yelled at her.

Those are among 64 hate crimes Salt Lake City police reported to the state Bureau of Criminal Identification from 1999 to 2003 in which no arrests were made. Arrests were made in 12 of the 76 hate crime cases provided to the Deseret Morning News in an open records request.

The statistics speak to one of the main sticking points in the drawn-out battle over the effectiveness of the state's hate crimes law: whether the victims are protected under other criminal statutes against crimes motivated by prejudice. Once again, lawmakers have before them a bill that would step up penalties for crimes committed because of bias against the victim.

Unlike past proposals, this year's bill, HB90, isn't an enhancement, but it would create an aggravating factor to be considered by a judge or the Board of Pardons and Parole in sentencing the convict. It also eliminates the hotly contested categories of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc., that have stalled past hate crimes legislation.

A recent Deseret Morning News/KSL TV poll showed strong public support for allowing longer sentences for bias-based crimes. Some 72 percent of 415 people polled by Dan Jones & Associates are in favor of the legislation, while 22 percent are opposed to it. The poll, conducted Feb. 14-16, had a 5 percent margin of error.

The bill has passed its first hurdle — a House committee voted to move it to the floor, where it could be debated today. That's the furthest the bill has gotten since 2003. But, despite the changes to make the legislation more palatable to opponents, the same arguments are being lined up against it: The state already has laws that protect people, regardless of their race, religion or sexual orientation.

Indeed, statistics show that the arrest rate of 16 percent for suspected hate crimes was slightly higher than that for arrests for all crimes committed in 2003.

However, while two-thirds of crimes reported overall were classified as larceny, nearly every hate crime reported involved threats, harassment, vandalism or assault.