The horrifying murders that took place in Sligo this week have not been solved. However, at this early stage of the Garda investigation, one strong line of enquiry is that the victims may have been targeted and killed by somebody who wanted to hurt gay men in particular. In other words, that they were motivated by hate.
If true, this would be deeply troubling. And the direct political consequence will be a ramping up of pressure for so-called “hate crime” legislation which would impose an additional penalty on a person convicted of carrying out an attack motivated by hate towards a particular minority group. Here’s Helen McEntee, yesterday, making that very point:
Justice Minister Helen McEntee says everything will be done to find who is behind the murders in Sligo and says new laws around homophobic attacks will be brought forward pic.twitter.com/0s75FouIka
— Seán Defoe (@SeanDefoe) April 13, 2022
At times of heightened emotion, politicians are particularly vulnerable to “do-something-ism”. “Something must be done; this is something; therefore this must be done”. That train of thought will mostly explain the renewed push for hate-crime legislation that is likely to come in the next few weeks.
The difficulty is this: There is no evidence at all, at this stage – and nor is there likely to be at any stage – that these murders would have been prevented by hate crime legislation. Nor is it in any way likely that hate crime legislation, were it in place, would impact the outcome of any prosecution that may take place.
The penalty for murder, after all, is life in prison. That is the maximum penalty that can be applied under Irish law. Hate crime legislation proposes to take the aggravating factor of “hate” into account during sentencing – but how do you take it into account in a murder case, when the penalty that will be applied is the maximum we can apply to begin with?
And how could “hate crime” legislation have prevented these crimes? The law might outlaw hatred, in theory, but it is hardly likely to outlaw it in practice. Somebody who has become so psychotically deranged as to wish to brutally murder two strangers is not likely to be deterred or dissuaded by a hate-crimes law, after all. The evidence for that statement is simply this: Murder is already illegal, but that fact did not deter the perpetrator of these two horrific crimes.
These crimes, horrible as they are, have neither strengthened the rationale for hate crime laws, nor reduced the problems with hate crime laws. Those problems remain the same.
After all, a hate crime law does not actually criminalise an action: Beating somebody up, or murdering them, is already illegal. A hate crime law does not criminalise an assault – it criminalises a thought. It says that it is worse to beat somebody up because they are gay than it is to beat them up because, say, they flirted with your girlfriend. One is a hate crime; the other is a jealousy crime. In both cases, an innocent victim has been harmed, but in one case, we award a harsher sentence because we do not like the motive. That’s the proposal, and it makes no sense.
After all, how can a hate crime truly be determined? Even in 2022, we lack the capability to read people’s minds. Motive can be inferred, in a criminal case, but it can rarely be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Bear in mind that this is the standard we use, in criminal cases: To be guilty, at least of a serious crime, a jury must be able to believe that your guilt is beyond reasonable doubt.
Hate Crime laws, by their very definition, undermine that standard. In the absence of a person admitting it, there simply is no way to prove what a person was thinking, when they carried out a crime, beyond a reasonable doubt. Divining a motive is almost always a source of reasonable doubt. If these crimes are to carry additional prison time, then, by definition, we are going to start sending people to prison despite being unable to meet the standards of proof which society has always said were necessary before depriving somebody of their liberty.
Nor are these laws necessary: The Gardai have already arrested a person in connection with the Sligo murders, which suggests that their investigation is proceeding reasonably well. If a person is charged, tried, and convicted for these crimes, they will face the full punishment of law. It is illegal to kill, or injure, or attack a person for any reason – and that should be enough, in a sensible country.
After all, have we considered the other impact of hate crime laws? Because if hate crimes are a special, serious, category, what does that say about other, non-hate-motivated, murders, and assaults? Is the victim of a brutal beating by a gang less of a victim, and deserving of lesser protection, than a gay man attacked by a gang of drunks? Why should the attackers of the first man receive a lesser sentence than the attackers of a second?
The murders in Sligo are horrifying. They are not, however, more, or less horrifying because the victims were gay. They are horrifying for the same reason that Ashling Murphy’s murder was horrifying – because innocent people have had their lives stolen from them in an act of horrific cruelty.
Politicians who are demanding a new category of offence on foot of these crimes are not legislating sensibly. They are peacocking for the cameras, and votes. Their idea was a bad one yesterday, and it remains a bad one today, regardless of these horrendous crimes.