Racist even gets convicted of hate crimes in Federal Court and ETs resident racist still defending his fellow racist.
George Will WaPo Opinion: Ahmaud Arbery’s racist killers are grotesque, but their ‘hate crimes’ prosecution was a show trial But as Jacob Sullum, senior editor of Reason, notes: It is therefore “equally true that the defendants were convicted ‘because of’ their benighted beliefs. Condemning them as bigots was the whole point of this exercise, since they had already been condemned (and punished) as murderers.” This misuse of judicial proceedings was, Sullum says, possible because of two regrettable Supreme Court conclusions: The killers’ “second, symbolic prosecution did not amount to double jeopardy, because the state and federal crimes, defined by two different ‘sovereigns,’ are not ‘the same offense.’” And prosecutions of hate crimes are deemed consistent with the First Amendment, even if they impose added punishment for speech that, however scabrous, is nevertheless constitutionally protected. So, the government can conduct trials for the purpose of virtue signaling — to announce, however redundantly, that it condemns particular frames of mind. A bigot’s shabby mental furniture is, however, not a crime. Were it, what other mentalities might government decide to stigmatize by imposing special punishments? Arbery’s killers had expressed their racism in speech (texts, social media posts, remarks) that no jurisdiction can proscribe. But their federal punishment will be imposed precisely because their speech demonstrated their bigotry.