i'll put more thought into this later, i haven't read any of the replies so if i repeat, then that's why.
All right, they should never be punished harsher. Why? because it's too subjective to even begin to be near fair. We punish people for the actions they do, not what they think. Since when did court become the thought police? We can never know with absolute certainty how a person thinks. Even if they admit it, they could be putting on a front, a possibility. If we can't know with a good deal of certainty that it was a hate crime, then we shouldn't tack on longer harsher punishments simply for the way we think they may have thought. We shouldn't punish people for the way they think. With this mentality, we'd leave ourselves open to a whole lot of flawed precedents to be set in this field.
Once again, we aren't the thought police, we can never know what another person is thinking, and we simpy don't punish people on what they think...why should we? We've all had evil thoughts, but punishing evil thoughts will never allow them to change, at least make it very hard. It could just be a phase, maybe not. Maybe they were brought up that way to think that way, and they haven't realized it's wrong yet. Punishing thoughts is a terrible advance on our court systems...i don't like it. And i'll end with a cliche "a murder is a murder, is a murder." Just because the thoughts were mal formed and evil doesn't make it anything more...if anything it's just an evil murder...ok. so it's an evil murder. But they didn't do anything else wrong besides murder someone. This is just an example.
wow, i wrote more than i thought i would.
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