|
|
Violent Crime (last updated May 22, 2002) (back to top)
Rates of violent crimes, including murders and robberies, declined over the 1990s. While the murder rate is so small compared to other violent crimes that it is barely visible on the first graph below, the homicide rate is broken down further in the second graph, along with a breakdown of the homicide rate by the race of the victim.
The number of law-enforcement officers killed in the line of duty has seen an overall decline since the 1970s, though the number has varied from year to year. Of the more than 1,800 officers killed between 1976 and 1999, 17 percent were responding to a disturbance call, 14 percent were investigating suspicious persons or circumstances, and 14 percent were in a robbery arrest situation.
For more information on crime statistics, go here.
Sources: All data is from the Bureau of Justice Statistics data, available here. Specifically, BJS data on violent crimes is on-line here, on homicides here, and on the number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty here.
Homicides by Race and Circumstance (back to top)
Sources: Bureau of Justice Statistics data, available here.
Rape Statistics (last updated August 31, 2002) (back to top)
Rapes have become less common since the 1970s, as the number of rapes combined per 10,000 people aged 10 and older has fallen from 25 in 1973 to 6 in 2000, according to national surveys conducted by the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics. This statistic includes reported and unreported instances, thus accounting for the high number of sexual assaults that go unreported (an estimated 64 percent in 1994).
However, while this statistic does show a general decline, the annual rate of rapes does differ dramatically for women and for men. In 1994, 46 out of every 10,000 women aged 12 or older were victimized by rape or sexual assault, compared to only 5 out of every 10,000 similarly aged men.
Most rapes and sexual assaults -- whether the victim is a woman or man -- generally are committed by someone known to the victim (about two-thirds of instances).
As for where rapes and sexual assaults are most likely to occur, that depends on whether the rape or sexual assault was committed by an acquaintance or a stranger. Rapes and sexual assaults committed by acquaintances are most likely to occur in the victim's home (45.5 percent of the time) or in the home of a friend, relative or neighbor (27.2 percent).
By contrast, rapes and sexual assaults committed by strangers do not occur primarily in one location, but in a variety of locations. They occur on the street away from the victim's home (19.5 percent), in the victim's home (12.6 percent), in the home of a friend, relative or neighbor (10.9 percent), in a parking lot or garage (8.9 percent), or in other locations.
Sources: Overall rape incidence data from 1973 to 2000 is taken from the National Crime Victimization Survey, compiled here. Rape incidence data from 1994 is taken from Violence Against Women: Estimates from the Redesigned Survey, which is written by Ronet Bachman and Linda E. Saltzman, published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and is on-line here. Data on where rapes are most likely to occur is taken from Criminal Victimization in the United States, 1994, a report which was published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and is on-line here.
Three Strikes Law (last updated March 11, 2003) (back to top)
California's "three strikes" law, which was first enacted in 1994, requires longer prison sentences for habitual offenders who have been convicted for a third or second felony if their previous felonies were sufficiently serious to be considered a "strike." Although states have had laws punishing habitual offenders for decades, and although many states and the federal government enacted "three-strikes" laws in the mid-1990s, California's is more broadly defined and has sparked the most controversy.
Courts so far have rejected broad constitutional challenges to three-strikes laws, saying that they are not unconstitutional on their face. Some federal courts have tried to moderate California's law in specific circumstances, saying that some applications are unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment or by saying that some prior offenses should not be counted as "strikes" against an offender, but the United States Supreme Court has rejected these efforts.
As of December 2001, there were about 40,000 people in prison with sentences imposed under California's three-strikes law, constituting about a quarter of the state's prison population. Offenders whose "third strike" was a homicide or felony assault constituted about 16 percent, but most three-strikers have been sentenced for nonviolent crimes. Property-related crimes are responsible for almost a third of the three-strike sentences and drug-related strikes for about 17 percent.
California's law was just the most visible and most far-reaching of the three-strikes laws passed in the mid-1990s amidst controversy over habitual offenders such as the one who killed a young girl named Polly Klaas. Between 1993 and 1995, 24 states and the federal government all enacted three-strikes laws, according to a study published by the U.S. Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in September 1997. Some other states, such as Texas, already had habitual-offender laws in place beforehand.
Under California's three-strikes law, a felony offender who has been convicted of two previous "strikeable offenses" (such as murder, rape, robbery, arson, kidnapping, and drug sales to minors) will receive an enhanced sentence (minimum sentence of 25 years) for the third felony conviction, even if the third felony is not a "strikeable" offense. In addition, a felony offender who has been previously convicted of a strikeable offense will receive a doubled sentence for the second offense, even if the second felony is not a "strikeable" offense.
By contrast, most other states' three-strikes laws typically apply only to the most violent repeat offenders and thus have not been seen as not effecting a great change in a state's sentencing policy or prison system. A report by the Sentencing Project found that, as of mid-1998, only six states had been using the three-strikes legislation to any significant extent. Of these states, California had by far the most (about 40,000 sentenced convicts), with Georgia, South Carolina, Nevada, Washington and Florida all with less than 1,000 each.
For example, Washington State's three-strikes law, which was enacted in 1993 and was the country's first such law, requires that all three offenses be specifically-listed offenses for the third felony to trigger harsher penalties. It does not include a second-strike provision. The federal government also enacted a three-strikes law in 1994 (18 U.S.C. 3559(c)), requiring that a person be sentenced to life imprisonment if he has been convicted of a serious violent offense and was previously convicted of two or more serious violent offenses.
The differences in three-strikes laws have led to different results in respective prison populations. According to the NIJ's study, as of March 1, 1996, California had 15,230 second-strikers and 1,477 third-strikers incarcerated, most of whom had committed non-violent crimes, and Washington State had only 53 inmates incarcerated, who had -- with one exception -- committed crimes against persons.
Many have tried attacking three-strikes laws as cruel and unusual punishment (which is barred by the Eighth Amendment, text here). However, most lower courts have rejected these arguments.
In deciding whether a sentence violates the Eighth Amendment, the Supreme Court said in the case of Solem v. Helm (1983) that sentences are to be reviewed for proportionality to the crime for which one has been convicted. Such a proportionality review is guided by the gravity of the offense and the harshness of the penalty, a comparison to sentences for other crimes in the same jurisdiction, and a comparison to sentences for the same crime in other jurisdictions.
( In Solem, a criminal defendant was given a life sentence without parole for passing a "no account" check worth $100, which would ordinarily be punished by a maximum of five years. But because he had been convicted of six prior felonies (three burglaries, one count of obtaining money under false pretenses, one grand larceny, and one drinking while under the influence), he was subject to South Dakota's recidivist statute. The Court held that this sentence was unconstitutional. Three years earlier, in Rummel v. Estelle (1980), the Court upheld a life sentence in Texas for a defendant who had been convicted of stealing $120.75 by false pretenses (two prior felony convictions for fraudulent use of a credit card and for passing a forged check) because there was the possibility of parole after 12 years. )
However, proportionality review has been sharply constrained since the 1991 case of Harmelin v. Michigan. There, the Court let stand a life sentence without parole for a criminal defendant convicted in Michigan of possessing 672 grams of cocaine. The Court disagreed on whether proportionality was the proper standard, but the decisive plurality led by Justice Anthony Kennedy concluded that the Eighth Amendment "forbids only extreme sentences that are grossly disproportionate to the crime."
Despite the high standard required for an Eighth Amendment violation, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (which covers California) has held that California's three-strikes law is applied unconstitutionally when it is applied to petty theft offenses that might otherwise be misdemeanors. In Andrade v. Attorney General of the State of California (November 2001), the offender had been given two 25-year sentences for stealing nine videotapes worth a total of $153.54 (he had three prior residential burglary convictions). In Brown v. Mayle (February 2002), the offender had been given a 25-year sentence for stealing a steering wheel alarm worth $25 (he had five serious or violent prior felony convictions from more than a decade earlier). The Ninth Circuit declared such applications of the three-strikes law unconstitutional, but emphasized that the overall law stands.
The United States Supreme Court, however, decided in March 2003 that the Ninth Circuit had misapplied the standard set out in its previous decisions. It thus upheld the offender's two 25-year sentences.
As of December 2001, offenders, like in the Andrade and Brown cases, whose third offenses were petty theft with a prior felony conviction, made up about 4.6 percent of all third-strikers in prison.
Some have credited California's three-strikes law with causing a reduction in violent crime, though how much credit it can properly claim is unclear, especially given the national decline in violent crime (for more on national crime statistics, go here). A study by the California Attorney General's office published in December 2000 credited the decrease from 1991 to 1999 mostly to an abatement of the "crack epidemic" of the early 1990s, and a decline in handgun use, though it did point to increased incarceration rates as well.
Sources: The National Institute of Justice's report, "Three Strikes and You're Out": A Review of State Legislation (September 1997), is available on-line via the corrections section of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, on-line here. The Sentencing Project, on-line here, published an August 2001 report entitled "Aging Behind Bars: "Three Strikes" Seven Years Later." Families to Amend California's 3-Strikes (FACTS) is an advocacy group on-line here. Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit cases are available on-line via Findlaw.com; the March 2003 decision overturning the Ninth Circuit's decision in Andrade v. Attorney General of the State of California is on-line here. Data on second- and third-strikers in the inmate population populations is from a December 2001 report by California's Department of Corrections and is on-line here. The California Attorney General's report, "Why Did the Crime Rate Decrease Through 1999?" (December 2000), is available on-line here.
The "Missing Children" Problem, including the Kidnapping of Children (last updated October 6, 2002) (back to top)
Despite intensive media coverage of particular incidents, the stereotypical kidnapping of a child by a stranger is a very rare instance, occurring only about 200-300 times a year, according to a 1990 federally-funded study that is still considered authoritative. Statistics going much higher for so-called "missing children" are usually the result of lumping in what the most authoritative federal study calls "extremely dissimilar social problems," such as runaways, abductions by non-custodial family members, and technical abductions such as violent crimes that involved moving a victim distances as little as 22 feet.
The problem of "missing children" first emerged as a political issue in the early 1980s after several unrelated incidents, such as the 1981 kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh, the 9-year-old son of current television personality John Walsh. With attention on this new problem, many people threw around statistics that were not necessarily founded in hard data or that were not clearly defined.
Over time, some began to cast doubt on these statistics and raise questions about their basis in fact. The Denver Post, in a Pulitzer-Prize winning series, pointed out the "numbers gap" between such statistics and the number of investigations conducted by the FBI of children abducted by strangers. The FBI's investigative jurisdiction is limited to crimes that violate federal statutes or cross state lines, but even so, if there really were 50,000 children kidnapped by strangers a year, why was the FBI investigating less than 100 cases a year in the 1980s?
To help understand the controversy, the Department of Justice commissioned the National Incidence Study of Missing, Abducted, Runaway and Thrownaway Children (NISMART), which was released in 1990 and is still considered the best source of data on the "missing children" problem. Using a household telephone survey, a review of police records in 21 counties in 16 different states, and a new analysis of FBI data, the NISMART study broke down the "missing children" problem into specific categories and to make some estimates. The study also broke these estimates down into "broad scope" numbers for those situations that a family might be concerned about but which are often resolved quickly and without incident, and "policy-focal" numbers for more serious situations which might concern police and social-service agencies, and in which a child might be in danger.
- Stereotypical kidnappings (a.k.a. stranger abductions) (200-300 a year). This is what people usually think about when discussing "missing children." In these cases, the perpetrator was a stranger; the child was detained overnight, killed, or transported at least 50 miles; and the perpetrator either wanted ransom in exchange for child's return or expressed intention to keep child permanently. Compared to non-family abductions, the victims and perpetrators here are more likely to be Caucasian, the victims are less likely to have been lured away, and the victims are less likely to have been sexually assaulted.
- Legal-definition non-family abductions (3,200-4,600 successful abductions a year, with about 114,600 children experiencing an attempted non-family abduction a year). In these cases, the perpetrator was not a family member but was not necessarily a stranger; the child was moved at least 20 feet by use of force or threat; and the perpetrator concealed the child's whereabouts, requested ransom, or expressed an intention to keep child permanently. This category also includes instances where a non-family member took a child apparently to physically or sexually assault the child.
- Family abductions (354,100 "broad scope" a year, and 163,200 "policy focal"). Broad-scope family abductions occur when a family member takes a child in violation of a custody agreement, or keeps a child in violation of a custody agreement for at least one night. Policy-focal abductions also involve concealment of the child's whereabouts, transporting the child out-of-state, or indications that the abductor intends to keep the child permanently.
- Runaways (450,700 "broad scope" a year, and 133,500 "policy focal"). Broad-scope runaways are children who leave home without permission and stay away overnight, or who refuse to return home for at least one or two nights. Policy-focal children are those broad-scope runaways who are without a secure and familiar place to stay while away from home.
- Thrownaway children (127,100 "broad scope" a year, and 59,200 "policy focal"). A child is a broad-scope thrownaway if the child has been told to leave the household, has been away from home and a caretaker has refused to take the child back, if the child had run away and the caretaker made no efforts to locate the child or did not care if the child returned, or if the child had been abandoned or deserted. A child is a policy-focal thrownaway if the child was abandoned or if the child had no secure or familiar place to stay.
- Lost, injured or otherwise missing (438,200 "broad scope" a year, and 139,100 "policy focal" a year). Children in the broad-scope version of this category are those who were missing for a period of time (from a few minutes to overnight) for a variety of reasons. Those in the policy-focal version involved situations serious enough to warrant calling the police.
Breaking apart these statistics and not including any definitions can cause some confusion. For example, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's website as of September 2002 provides an arguably incomplete answer, at best, to the "frequently asked question" of "how many missing children are there." Explicitly citing to the NISMART, the NCMEC does not explain what "abduction" can mean, only uses the "broad scope" numbers, and leaves out the stereotypical kidnapping figure of 200-300 a year or any mention of the "policy-focal" numbers. A reader may be left with the impression that there are more "missing children" than the NISMART report itself would have indicated.
In fact, one of the NISMART's main authors has criticized how advocates have grouped "missing children" statistics together and how they have used anecdotal evidence of specific instances of stranger abductions to seek political change.
"It has been very tempting to use parents' fears about stranger abductions to galvanize politicians to protect children from other crimes and other threats, but it is a mistake to focus public policy concerning child victimization on the crime of stranger abduction. It is not just that the number of such crimes is relatively small but that abduction is not a particularly good category for organizing or counting the criminal victimization of children," David Finkelhor and others wrote in a June 1992 article. "The nature and seriousness of abductions are mostly determined by the nature and severity of the other crimes that are committed in their course, such as rape, assault, and murder. And in fact, these crime categories are better focal points for action on child victimization."
A recent study funded by the Department of Justice backed up the NISMART's conclusion that juvenile kidnapping is a relatively rare crime. According to that June 2000 report by the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), kidnapping of juveniles made up only one-tenth of one percent of crimes against all individuals in 12 states in the survey, and only 1.5 percent of all violent crimes against juveniles. The report also concluded that the most common type of kidnapping was by a family member (49 percent), then by an acquaintance (27 percent), and finally by a stranger (24 percent).
Some advocates have occasionally pointed to statistics derived from other studies, but these statistics are not necessarily designed for the ways in which they are sometimes used and sometimes have limitations. For example :
- A National Center for Missing and Exploited Children study in 1986 estimated that there were about 30,000 stranger abductions of children a year. However, this estimation was made by extrapolating from the kidnapping rates in only two cities (Houston, Texas and Jacksonville, Florida) that had rates of serious violent crime at least twice that of the national average. The kidnapping statistics also did not distinguish between instances where victims were missing for less than 24 hours (which accounted for 97.6 percent of all cases studied) and those where they permanently disappeared.
- The National Crime Information Center annually tracks the number of missing-person cases reported to it each year; in 2001, there were 840,279 missing persons, and about 85-90 percent were children. However, unlike the NISMART, this statistic is not broken down into specific categories and it does not reflect how many cases were actual kidnappings that required investigation and which were, for example, runaways or family abductions. For example, in 1985, the NCIC entered 14,816 cases in its involuntary missing files, but the FBI only received 867 cases to investigate kidnapping, some of which involved adult victims.
Regardless of the magnitude of the problem, the "missing children" problem has rallied many efforts to help, though some solutions are not necessarily well-tailored to all the different aspects of the overall problem. One solution that has received much attention in recent years has been the implementation of "Amber Alert" programs that mobilize police forces in a region to locate abducted children. Named after a 9-year-old Texas girl who was kidnapped and murdered in 1996, the programs have been adopted in more than 15 states, but critics have said that overuse and non-selective use could dilute their effectiveness.
The overall issue has also been kept alive through the now-commonplace photographs on milk cartons, a practice which was started in 1984 by Midwest dairy-owner Walter Woodbury and which quickly become commonplace due to public and private efforts. Schools, private companies, and nonprofit organizations have also organized programs to fingerprint children to identify them if they ever disappear and are recovered.
Sources: Martin L. Forst & Martha-Elia Blomquist, Missing Children : Rhetoric and Reality (Lexington Books, 1991). Joel Best, Threatened Children : Rhetoric and concern about child-victims (University of Chicago Press, 1990). Nancy L. Asdigian, David Finkelhor, and Gerald Hotaling, Varieties of Nonfamily Abduction of Children and Adolescents, Criminal Justice and Behavior (Volume 22, Number 3, September 1995). David Finkelhor, Gerald Hotaling, and Nancy Asdigian, Attempted Non-Family Abductions, Child Welfare (Volume 74, Number 5, September-October 1995). Eugene M. Lewit and Linda Schuurmann Baker, Missing Children, Children and Managed Care (Volume 8, Number 2, Spring 1998) (available on-line via The Future of Children here. David Finkelhor and Richard Ormrod, Kidnapping of Children: Patterns from NIBRS (June 2000), available via the Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, on-line here. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is on-line here. Information on Amber Alerts is on-line here and here.
Hate Crimes : Federal and State Hate-Crime Legislation (last updated January 18, 2003) (back to top)
With growing awareness of violence directed against members of non-majority groups, many states have enacted a wide variety of hate-crime legislation that often involve the creation of new crimes or sentence enhancement. At the federal level, civil-rights statutes from the post-Civil War era and from the 1960s occasionally have been used to prosecute perpetrators of certain kinds of hate crimes, but debate continues as to whether broader measures should be enacted and how to tailor such laws without penalizing the offender's mere beliefs or violating free-speech or federalism concerns.
In recent years, public debate has focused on whether federal civil-rights laws should be amended to cover crimes directed against people because of their sexual orientation. Such measures have been introduced in the House and Senate, but have never become law. For example, the Senate voted 57-42 in June 2000 to pass the Hate Crimes Prevention Act - later renamed the Local Law Enforcement Act of 2000 - as an amendment to a defense authorization bill; the House later supported a parallel measure 232-192. However, on October 5, 2000, Republicans stripped the measure from the bill as the houses negotiated the final working of the authorization bill.
Hate-Crimes Legislation in the States
More than 20 states have passed hate-crimes legislation. These laws take many different forms; some criminalize acts such as intimidation or cross-burning, and some enhance the sentences for crimes that are specifically directed at someone because of a particular status category such as race or sexual orientation.
New York's hate-crime laws, for example, break what is popularly considered a hate-crime down into two crimes. First, there is the underlying crime itself, be it assault, rape, or other crimes. Second, there is the hate crime itself, which New York defines in Penal Law 485.05 as the intentional selection of a victim of based on a belief or perception regarding the "race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation of a person, regardless of whether the belief or perception is correct." A person who commits a hate crime will generally receive a higher sentence for the underlying crime.
Additionally, New York has created the crime of aggravated harassment, Penal Law 240.30, which is when someone "strikes, shoves, kicks, or otherwise subjects another person to physical contact, or attempts or threatens to do the same because of a belief or perception regarding such person's race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation, regardless of whether the belief or perception is correct."
But even if a state does not have a hate-crimes measure, a state can still prosecute offenders to a serious degree. For example, those who killed Matthew Shepard in Wyoming and those who killed James J. Byrd Jr. in Texas were all prosecuted and convicted under standard criminal laws.
Hate-Crimes Legislation at the Federal Level
The federal government does have the power to prosecute what are now considered hate-crimes based on laws passed after the Civil War and because of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but this power only covers some of the possible categories generally considered targeted by hate crimes and is limited by federalism concerns. Federal prosecutors have generally used such laws to prosecute crimes when local officials have failed or are unable to do so.
Currently, the federal government can prosecute those who commit certain kinds of hate-crimes based on race, color, religion, or national origin, but not hate-crimes based on gender, sexual orientation, or disability status. Recent legislative and political efforts have focused on expanding the coverage of existing civil-rights laws to include such categories. The Violence Against Women Act was enacted in 1994 and did expand 245's reach towards gender, but the Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional in 1999, holding that Congress did not have the power to pass such a law.
Beyond the status categories covered by such laws, these laws require some kind of "nexus" in order to justify federal jurisdiction (this is what the Violence Against Women Act lacked). A relevant 1870 law limits federal prosecutions to those committed "under color of law," meaning those who act with the official or unofficial approval of government officials. A 1968 law limits federal prosecutions to those that involve the deprivation of one's federal civil rights or the ability to enjoy public places.
Once this nexus can be found, prosecutors can use these civil-rights laws to bring criminal charges in federal court and to get around double-jeopardy. Under the U.S. Constitution, a person can be prosecuted for a crime only once by each government that can prosecute the case. And because most criminal law is conducted by each state, that usually means one shot and that's it. But federal hate-crime laws give the federal government its own chance to prosecute, effectively making federal prosecutors the back-up squad in case the state prosecutors either do not prosecute or fail to get a conviction.
Accordingly, federal prosecutors were able to bring charges against the local Mississippi police who killed three civil-rights workers in 1965 and the Los Angeles police officers who beat Rodney King in March 1991.
In addition, the federal Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act does enhance sentences for hate crimes committed against a wide group of statuses, but only when these crimes are committed on federal land.
First Amendment and Other Concerns
Debate continues not only over what status categories should be covered by hate-crimes laws, but over how to write and apply such laws without violating other civil rights. These concerns express themselves in different ways.
The Supreme Court, for example, has struck down laws that were too specific; in 1992 the United States Supreme Court struck declared unconstitutional a local ordinance in Minnesota that criminalized cross-burning because it did not cover similarly hostile acts that were not based on race or other specific categories.
Similarly, the American Civil Liberties Union has supported expanding the coverage of federal civil-rights laws to sexual orientation and gender, but has simultaneously urged restrictions on the kinds of evidence that can be used at trial. In 1999, the ACLU warned that prosecutors have at times used evidence showing nothing more than that the defendant had racist views; the ACLU thus recommended that the Senate include an evidentiary provision that would prevent "evidence proving the defendant's mere abstract beliefs" or "evidence of the defendant's mere membership in an organization" from use at trial. This way, a prosecutor could not get someone convicted simply because he had biases against minorities.
An Example of How Hate Crime Legislation Works and Fails
The use and possible misuse of federal civil-rights laws in alleged hate-crime situations can be seen in perhaps the most infamous incident of a crime involving an Asian-American victim. In 1982, Chinese-American Vincent Chin was killed by two white men who reportedly mistook him for a Japanese person and who reportedly blamed the Japanese for the economic woes then plaguing the Detroit area. Chin had encountered Ronald Ebens and Ebens' stepson Michael Nitz at a strip-club that Chin had attended for his pre-wedding bachelor's party; a fight ensued, and Ebens and Nitz ultimately chased Chin for blocks until Ebens beat Chin to death with a baseball bat.
Admitting that he had killed Chin but claiming that he had been drunk and was provoked, Ebens pled guilty in state court to manslaughter and was given probation and a $3,720 fine. With widespread public outrage at the low sentence and with state prosecutors barred from taking further action because of double-jeopardy provisions, federal prosecutors then indicted Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz for violating 18 USC 245(b)(2)(F), a 1968 law that involved depriving someone of their right to enjoy a public place of accommodation.
At trial in federal court, Ebens was convicted and Nitz acquitted, but Ebens' conviction was then overturned by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1986 on several grounds that arguably highlight the dangers in hate-crime prosecution. Because Ebens had admitted committing the actual act, the prosecution only had to prove the reasons why Ebens had killed Chin, specifically, that Ebens had done so because of Chin's race and in order to interfere with Chin's right to enjoy the strip club. However, in trying to prove Ebens' motives, the prosecution and an activist lawyer took improper actions, the Sixth Circuit ruled.
First, an activist lawyer (who had founded an Asian-American advocacy group) had coached eyewitnesses into giving testimony that would show more clearly that Ebens had made racial epithets and that racist and that would help get a conviction; the Sixth Circuit ruled that the defense should have been fully informed of the extent of coaching and should have been allowed to play complete tapes of such sessions to the jury. Second, federal prosecutors improperly used a 1974 incident to show that someone who may have been Ebens had prejudices against blacks; the Sixth Circuit said this was too vague and remote to be admissible evidence as to whether Ebens acted with prejudice towards Chin in 1982. Third, the Sixth Circuit criticized federal prosecutors for injecting personal comments into his closing statement and for using public sentiment to convict rather than ensuring a fair trial.
Federal prosecutors tried to prosecute Ebens again, this time in a different venue, Cincinnati. Ebens was acquitted in 1987 of all charges. Ebens later that year settled a civil lawsuit brought by Chin's estate; Ebens agreed to pay up $200 a month for two years and then 25 percent of his net pay to Chin's estate until the accumulated payments reached $1.5 million, a sum Ebens was unlikely ever to meet.
Sources: Making Hate a Crime: From Social Movement to Law Enforcement, Valerie Jenness and Ryken Grattet (Russell Sage Foundation, 2001). James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter, Hate Crimes : Criminal Law & Identity Politics (Oxford University Press, 1998). United States v. Ebens, 800 F.2d 1422 (6th Cir. 1986). Associated Press, Slayer is acquitted of civil rights violation, New York Times, May 2, 1987. Reuters, $1.5 million in wrongful death, New York Times, July 31, 1987. Seth Mydans, 2 of 4 officers found guilty in Los Angeles beating, New York Times, April 18, 1993. The American Civil Liberties Union has a May 11, 1999 statement on the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 1999 on-line here.
Hate Crimes : Statistics (last updated January 18, 2003) (back to top)
Hate-crime statistics reported to the FBI from 1996 to 2001 show that hate crimes are perpetrated most often against blacks, homosexuals and Jews, but also show that the number of such crimes against Muslims and against people based on their non-Hispanic ethnicity or national origin increased dramatically from 2000 to 2001, probably because of reactions to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
As reported by the FBI, the overall number of hate crimes increased 20 percent from 2000 to 2001 largely based on such crimes directed against Muslims and based on victims' non-Hispanic ethnicity or national origin.
Specific incidents such as the October 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard and the 2001 hate crimes towards Muslims have drawn national attention, but it is still up for debate whether hate-crimes are in fact becoming more common or whether they are simply better reported now. Those who say that the incidence of hate-crimes has risen in recent years may not be taking into account a long-term view of history or making proper comparisons with earlier eras.
The following chart reflects FBI statistics from 1996 to 2001, which includes data from law-enforcement agencies covering roughly 85 percent of the nation; reports from earlier years had considerably fewer agencies reporting and are thus less useful for comparison. For purposes of such data collection, hate crimes are defined by federal law as "crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity."
In 2000, with agencies covering 84.2 percent of the nation reporting, there were 8,603 bias-motivated incidents involving 9,430 separate offenses, 9,924 victims, and 7,530 known distinguishable offenders. Of these, most were based on race (53.8 percent), followed by religion (18.3 percent), sexual orientation (16.1%), ethnicity/national origin (11.3 percent), and a small few against the disabled or based on multiple biases.
Racially-motivated hate crimes in 2000 were mostly anti-Black (66%), followed by anti-white (20%) and anti-Asian (6%); Hispanics are not included here but under the anti-ethnicity category. Religion-based hate crimes were mostly against Jews (75%); crimes against Muslims represented 2% of such religion-based hate crimes. Sexual-orientation hate crimes were directed mostly towards male homosexuals (69%) and then against lesbians (14%), with another 14% classified simply as against homosexuals without differentiation between males and females; 2 percent were against heterosexuals.
Most offenses were against persons (65%) and usually involved intimidation (35 percent of all hate-crime offenses) or some kind of non-fatal assault; aggravated assaults were less common, and murders and non-negligent manslaughters were rare. Of the offenses not directed against people, most involved vandalism (29 percent of all hate crimes).
Sources: The FBI's annual hate-crime reports are available on-line here. Making Hate a Crime: From Social Movement to Law Enforcement, Valerie Jenness and Ryken Grattet (Russell Sage Foundation, 2001). James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter, Hate Crimes : Criminal Law & Identity Politics (Oxford University Press, 1998).
|
|
|
Index / Home
FootnoteTV
Footnote Fahrenheit
Footnote Media
Issues
Cases
Resources
Footnote Comics
Site FAQ
Search via Google
Election 2004
Issues
|
|