Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics
Date:         Thu, 7 Jan 1993 17:16:01 EST
From:         Jamie <PL436000@BROWNVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Intent and thoughts: a puzzlement

Wow. Brett sent over 350 lines. I think they are VERY confused. I shall
do my best to cut down on the total volume of this posting, and this
exchange. I will reply in two postings.

>       Since when is editing == ignoring?

I sent a number of postings in which I argued that essentially
the line you are taking was wrong. You are taking into
account none of them. You haven't responded to those arguments.

Look at it this way. Suppose, after all of the thousands of
lines you wrote about the Reagan revolution, I sent in a post
saying, "Reagan's policies hurt the poor and benefitted the
rich." You could quite rightly say that I was ignoring all
of your arguments.

>>What has this got to do with your motivations?

>   I give up, what *does* it have to do with my motivations?

I don't know. Nothing, as far as I can tell. And yet, you said
that I thought I knew something about your motivations, and that
I was wrong. I found this mysterious, so I asked what you meant.
I now see that you don't know, either.

I delete most of the exchange about intent, because our
disagreement has become extremely clear. Brett claims
that discovering what someone intends does not involve
discovering what they think.

I find this extremely bizarre. I hardly know what to say. I will
try the following.

There might be two criminals. They might engage in EXACTLY
the same outward behavior. And yet, it might be the case
that one intended to kill an innocent person, and the other
did not. The only difference would be in their minds.

Does Brett deny THIS???? Or does he agree, but think that
nonetheless intent is not something in someone's mind?

Proving intent is (usually) a matter of establishing what
is called "mens rea," the guilty mind. Perhaps the legal
concept of intent is wrong. Perhaps intent is not a
mental phenomenon at all.

Or, maybe Brett has no _per se_ (stop me, stop me, I am
being taken over by a Roman lawyer) objection to requiring
proof of what was in someone's mind, but only if the requirement
involves proving what someone "thought." Maybe there is something
else about thoughts, other than their being mental, that he
finds objectionable? I doubt it, though.


>  A thought crime law attempts to criminalize behaviour that has not yet
> resulted in any crime (in the current sense of the word).

All laws do that. All laws attempt to criminalize behavior
that is not considered a crime under the state of the law
before passage of the bill.
Before there were laws against raping your wife, a bill proposed
to criminalize spouse rape was an attempt to criminalize behavior
that had not yet resulted in any crime (in the current sense
of the word). Was such a law PRO active or RE active?

> Tell us, what is the difference between assault (say to rob) and
> assualt (say because of race)?

Its intent, obviously.

I have to say again, that Brett seems very much confused
about this issue. He asks a question which has an answer
that is so obvious that I infer he must harbor some ulterior
motive in asking it.

The difference between a racially motivated assault and a
non-racially motivated assault is in (fanfare) the motivation.
Motivation is intent. What was Bob's motive in shooting three
bullets into that body? He intended to kill the person.
It was murder. Or, He believed that the body was dead, and
he was intending to play a sick joke. It was criminally
negligent homicide.

>  An attack is an attack.  The current law(s) fully punish the act.

A tautology is a tautology. :-b

The current laws punish the behavior. The Wisconsin law distinguishes
different acts by their intent. Just as homicide and murder
laws distinguish acts by their intent, and punish them
differentially.

> Under our current system of justice, you cannot try someone for
> thinking about murder, can you?

No, you certainly can't.

> But various bills would criminalize certain thoughts, like wanting to
> murder because of race.

This is false. Sorry.
The Wisconsin law does not propose to try or punish anyone simply
because he thinks about a racial assault or murder.
It proposes (and seems to be succeeding) to increase
the penalty for an assault when its intent was racial.
Just as all states (so far as I know, anyway) distinguish
between behavior which intends to cause death and behavior
which incidentally causes death.

>   (BTW-you're starting to mix the quota and thought crime debate)

Actually, YOU mixed them up! This is getting very humorous.

YOU first introduced the issue of quotas into the discussion
of intention and thoughts! And now you have forgotten that!

(I will go find the first posting in which you did it. Dare me?
:-) )

>  And just how can you prosecute someone for attempted murder without
>  proving intent?

You can't. It's impossible.

>       By asserting that "they thought about it"?

You don't ASSERT that they thought about it. But you cannot
convict someone for attempted murder unless you can SHOW
that they thought about it. If the person did not think
about it, he cannot possibly have intended it. If you don't
see this, I don't know what to say. Perhaps someone else
could have a try. (Or have a try at showing me what
mistake I'm making.)

> You can't try anyone for murder because they [don't] buy a certain
>number of guns.  Ownership of a gun is not proof of intent to murder.

Quite so.

>  You can, however, try someone because they [don't] hire a certain
> number of people filling subset X specifications.  But not having
> N minorities is seen as being a crime because "obviously" the
> person is discriminating.

No, this is wrong.
Statistical evidence is evidence of intent to discriminate,
both in fact, and in law. It is not CONCLUSIVE evidence.
Nor is it legally taken to be conclusive.

> Reactive: you shoot someone.
> Proactive: you haven't hired N purple people yet, we'll make you do it.
>
>       One assumes guilt before any proof of guilt.

Oh. Now I get it! It's a matter of assumption of guilt without
proof! ("Proactive" and "reactive" are very unusual words
for "conviction without proof" and "conviction with proof.")

But in that case, Brett is simply wrong. There are no criminal
laws according to which the state can convict someone without
proof. There are some cases of state action which are very
much like conviction without proof, and I am very much
opposed to them. ("Zero tolerance" is like that.)

Here ends the first posting. The second will be more specifically
about what Brett calls "quota laws." The two issues have
blended together. And it's Brett's fault. Thpppp.

Jamie
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