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Advocates of enhanced punishment want to take these restrictions a step further. The Mitchell case notwithstanding, most of the targets of hate crimes are blacks, Asians, homosexuals, Jews and members of other ethnic groups; crimes against them are especially reprehensible because these people are victimized on the basis of nothing more than their status. In their view, society should announce its values by placing a heavier weight of disapproval on crimes of hatred. Even without such laws, judges will sometimes take matters into their own hands. In December, Broward County Circuit Judge Richard Eade sentenced Bradley Mills to 50 years in prison -- going far beyond the 22 years that sentencing guidelines suggest -- for Mills' part in the murder of Lu Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American student at the University of Miami who was beaten to death by a mob of white partygoers while they taunted him for being Asian.
Despite the threat of tougher sentencing, hate crime is increasing. The Anti-Defamation League counted 1,730 anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. last year, the second highest total in the 14-year history of the ADL's audit. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force says attacks on homosexuals increased by 172% over the past five years. Klanwatch, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, reports that 1992 was "the deadliest and most violent year" for bias-related events in more than 10 years. Thirty-one of these were murders.
Despite the growing numbers, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe believes Wisconsin-style statutes are reasonable and necessary. "The absolute right to think and believe what you want," says Tribe "and to express any viewpoint, however hateful, has nothing to do with some kind of license to target victims of violence based on their race, sex, religion or sexual orientation." If the court struck down these laws, he adds, "the decision would cast a long shadow of doubt over all antidiscrimination measures and much of criminal law because the state of mind of the offenders is typically a critical element of how crimes are defined and how punishment is meted out."
The growth of hate crimes suggests that prejudice with its fists clenched is not all that susceptible to the persuasive power of the law. The legislation designed to deal with hate also becomes harder to justify when applied to threats -- but not to acts -- of violence. One of those laws became an issue in a major Ohio case that grew out of a 1989 incident at a public campground near Columbus. A black camper, Jerry White, complained to a park ranger about loud music coming from the neighboring campsite of David Wyant, a white man. After the park ranger left, Wyant shouted threats to shoot the "niggers." He was eventually charged with and convicted of aggravated menacing, a misdemeanor. But because his threat fell under Ohio's "ethnic intimidation" law, Wyant's crime was reclassified as a felony, which brought him an 18-month jail sentence.