Hate Crime

Hate crime. A crime where a perpetrator targets a victim because of their physical appearance or perceived membership of a certain social group. For example:

In 1964 in Mississippi, members of the Ku Klux Klan killed civil rights workers James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. After local officials refused to prosecute the case, some of the assailants were tried in federal court for civil rights violations under the theory that they conspired to violate the victim’s civil rights by murdering them due to their race.

In 1998 in Texas, James Byrd, Jr., an African American man, was murdered in Jasper, Texas, by white supremacists who kidnapped, beat, and tied him to the back of a pick-up truck, dragged him for three miles before he was decapitated, and then dumped his body in front of an African American church. Three men were ultimately convicted of Byrd’s murder.

In 1998 in Wyoming, Matthew Shepard, a university student, was tortured and murdered by two men because he was gay. At the ensuing murder trial, one of the attackers argued that he killed Shepard because Shepard made gay advances toward him (referred to as the gay panic defense). Both killers received life sentences.

In 1993 in Nebraska, Brandon Teena, a transgendered man, was raped and later murdered by two men after they discovered that she was anatomically female. The murder was later dramatized in the movie Boys Don’t Cry.

In 2002 in California, Gwen Araujo, a transgendered woman, was murdered by four men after the men—some of whom had engaged in sexual activities with her—discovered that she had a penis.Two of the killers were convicted of murder and the other two men plead guilty to manslaughter.