Hate crime enchantments are unjust in the United states

I Affirm. hate crime enchantments are unjust in the United states. To clarify the round I will give a few definitions. A hate crime is a crime, usually violent, motivated by prejudice or intolerance toward a member of a gender, racial, religious, or social group. In this resolution, hate crime "enhancements" refer to a heavier punishment if a crime had been committed out of racial hatred or other prejudices. For example, normal graffiti would not be punished so severely, but if a swastika was sprayed onto a Jewish temple, there is clear racial hatred behind the crime and the person would be punished much more severely. This pertains to all other aspects of crime, i.e. a lynching would be punished much more severely than a regular homicide. The United States justice system does recognize hate crimes and punishes them more severely. Thus my value for this round is justice; I will go ahead and define justice as "Giving Each Their Due". Therefore, my burden in this debate is to show that Hate crime enhancements are not giving each their due in the United States. Since the resolution grammatically dictates itself as the absolute truth, and also because the definition of justice is giving EACH their due, all I need to prove is that hate crime enhancements don't give some people their due. My value criterion is maximizing justice. First… a)Hate crime enhancements violate constitutional rights. It has been argued by columnist Nat Hentoff that hate crime laws are unfair to the perpetrator for a number of reasons. First, they violate the prohibition against double jeopardy as protected by in the Fifth Amendment because the perpetrator could be possible tried twice for the same crime; once in state courts and another time in the federal courts. Second he states that they violate the defendant's fourth amendment privacy rights because prosecutors can dig through the records of their personal history if they are trying to prove that the crime was motivated by hate. Another reason that most scholars find hate crime laws to be unconstitutional is that they violate the first amendment, particularly freedom of speech and expression. And most importantly, one can argue that hate crime enhancements violate the fourteenth amendments guarantee of equality for all under the law. Tamara Roleff argues that hate crime laws give minorities special protection that goes against the founding father's belief that everyone is created equal. b)Hate crimes are problematic because they punish criminals more harshly for their beliefs and not their acts. There is an insurmountable amount of literature that supports the idea that when bigots commit a crime that their penalty should only be for the act itself and not for the thought that might have led up to the act because a criminals motivation for committing a crime is irrelevant in providing them a harsher penalty. People who believe in this idea also agree that bigots, even if they lack integrity, are not criminals until they commit a crime based on their intolerance towards a person (Roleff). Therefore, this argument says that the United States government has no right to punish a person based on what they believe, read, or say. Because the court should not focus on the criminal's beliefs, Tamara Roleff argues that "By concentrating on the criminal's beliefs, the courts avoid focusing on the victims' rights, which should be the true aim of any judicial system." c) All crimes should receive the same punishment. This is a simple argument that says that all crimes are motivated by hate because people do not commit acts of violence out of love. Take for example a robber who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. The robber has an inherent hatred towards rich people, which is a form of classism. Essentially, this position would say that there is no such thing as a crime that is less offensive or worse than another. d)Currently legal system works, when determining causes of crimes, its on a foundation of "Beyond a reasonable doubt" You cant prove whether the crime was or not is a hate crime. Since there is absolutely no way to truly determine why someone committed an act, there will always be imperfections in the system. And because of this we are not giving each there due and there fore will not be fulfilling justice. For all these reasons you should affirm...