From: robert@informix.com (Robert Coleman)
Newsgroups: soc.women,alt.censorship,talk.politics.misc,soc.men
Subject: Re: Hate speech okay, Supreme Court says
Date: 28 Jul 92 23:23:33 GMT
Organization: Informix Software, Inc.

egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges) writes:

>In article <robert.711924326@labyrinth> robert@informix.com (Robert Coleman) writes:
>>
>>	It's not, but it's irrelevant.  You wouldn't be arrested for your
>>exercise of speech, you'd be arrested for robbery, which is a crime regardless
>>of your intended message.  You *would not undergo any punishment for your
>>message*.

>Your legal alchemy is able to transform the act of the punk Viktora, a
>form of assault, into protected speech that at one and the same time
>(you claim) can be punished under laws other than hate speech laws.  You
>fail to address how at one and the same time a citizen can be engaged in
>a crime (for posters have called for Viktora's prosecution under
>statutes other than hate crime statutes) AND in free speech.  One would
>think that a commission of a crime is NEVER speech.

	You seem to be busily engaged in putting words in my mouth, then
questioning why those words conflict with other things I have said.  I 
certainly am not the "one" you refer to above as believing that the commission
of a crime is never speech.
	Committing a crime is perhaps the most *dramatic* method of speaking.
What is terrorism but a crime with a message?  Without the message, it isn't
terrorism at all, is it?  That in no way means that the crime should be ignored
just because it is done as a form of speech.

	It's not legal alchemy.  A crime is a crime regardless of any message;
having a message attached does not prevent the crime from being prosecutable,
as the Cross-burning is prosecutable as trespass, possibly arson, etc.  The
Supreme Court has not ruled out prosecution for the crime portion, just for
the message portion.

>Why, then, is your legal alchemy unable to transform my hypothetical
>robbery (just another crime) into speech.  Because, again, I declare
>that these robberies are protests against economic injustice.
	
	It is speech.  I would expect the Supreme Court to strike down any law
that prohibited robbery specifically if that robbery were done as a protest 
against economic justice.  If the idea of such a law existing seems absurd to
you, you might consider that robbery has negative societal results apart from
the message, whereas burning a cross has, at most, the effect of increasing
air pollution, apart from the message.

>>	In contrast, Viktora would have been arrested for the message, when
>>it is not otherwise illegal to burn wood.

>Again: these attempts at miscasting what Viktora did constitute
>disinformation. In reality, Viktora victimized a black family with his
>crime.  Absent a hate crime statute, victims of these sorts of Nazi
>performance pieces have little recourse.  They can bring a private
>lawsuit, but often the perpetrators have little money and cannot be
>sued, or the victims cannot afford a civil suit.  In the absence of
>property damage (or a prominent white victim), the perpetrators are not
>likely to be sued for rowdyism because (again, absent a hate crime law)
>the authorities are apt to treat Nazi performances as little more than a
>hallowe'en prank.

	Authorities, of course, are quite free to interpret the law in whatever
way pleases them.  Hate law or not, if the authorities want something
prosecuted, they can do it; if they don't, they won't.  I'm not a law student,
but I'd guess that there are probably upwards of 7-8 different crimes that
could be applied to this action, from simple trespass to arson, with various
levels of punishment.  If the authorities chose, they could put away the
perpetrators, hate law or no.
	However, it's not against the law to hate.  If it were, you and I both
know that those folks who were not in jail would easily be able to know each
other by first names.
	You want to put people in jail for expressing hatred; a complete waste
of time, and counterproductive.  I really abhor what happened to the victims,
but I don't think jail time is an appropriate punishment for hatred.  On the
other hand, should they commit a serious crime, such as assault, I want them 
put away for a long, long time.

Robert C.
-- 
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