The New York Criminal Law Blog

Is Hate Necessary For Hate Crime?

By Emily Grube on December 11, 2009 9:03 AM | No TrackBacks

A New York criminal defense attorney always has their hands full when they are dealing with a hate crime case. 

The New York mugger who was notorious for attacking older women has been sentenced to 75 years in prison. The New York Times reports that Jack Rhodes, 47, was convicted of robbery, burglary, and assault. The thing that bumped up the jail time for these crimes was that they were considered to be hate crimes. 
 
The women were ages: 51, 101, and 85 years old. Now to prove that these were hate crimes, the prosecution had to prove that Rhodes attacked them because they were elderly women.  

The New York Penal Code defines a hate crime:

A person commits a hate crime when he or she commits a specified offense and ... : intentionally selects the person against whom the offense is committed or intended to be committed in whole or in substantial part because of 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. (Section 485.05). 

So based on this definition, Rhodes didn't have to hate the women he attacked for being elderly, he just had to target them because of their age and gender. 

As discussed in a recent hate crimes article, most people convicted of a hate crime are sentenced to twice the prison time and twice the fines of the regular crime. 
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