Jul 03, 2009  |  By: Chris Johnson  | COMMENTS     

GOP senators challenged the U.S. attorney general for supporting hate crimes legislation during a congressional hearing last week on the bill.

Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee hammered Attorney General Eric Holder with questions June 25 after he said the Obama administration “strongly supports” the federal bill and wants “swift passage” of the legislation.

Holder said the measure will “help protect all Americans from the scourge of the most heinous bias-motivated violence.”

“The time is now to provide our federal, state, local and other law enforcement officers with the tools they need to effectively prosecute … these heinous crimes,” he said.

Federal hate crimes legislation would enable the Justice Department to assist in the prosecution of hate crimes committed against LGBT people that result in death or serious injury.

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) introduced a version of the bill earlier this year in the Senate. The House passed another version of the legislation on April 29, 249-175.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (R-Vt.), the chair of the committee and co-sponsor of the legislation, said during the hearing that hate crimes legislation “has stalled for far too long.”

Sexual orientation-inclusive hate crimes bills have languished in Congress since they were first introduced in 1997.

Along with Holder, Leahy invoked the recent shootings at the National Holocaust Memorial Museum as a reason to pass the legislation. The incident resulted in the death of Stephen Johns, a museum security guard.

“This tragic murder is just the latest in an alarming string of hate crimes,” Leahy said, citing studies showing that bias-motivated crimes and hate groups are growing nationwide.

But Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the committee, questioned whether data show there is sufficient need to pass hate crimes legislation for LGBT people.

“One of the things that’s important is to know do we have a problem of … noticeable number of cases not being prosecuted in state and local government relating to these kinds of issues that we’re calling hate crimes,” he said.

Sessions frequently cited a statement against the proposed the legislation recently issued by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The panel decided, 6-2, to come out against the bill.

In response, Leahy noted that more than 300 civil rights groups, 26 state attorneys general, law enforcement organizations as well as other groups support the legislation.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said that during hate crimes legislation debate across the last decade, he has called for evidence that “crimes motivated by prejudice are not being punished at the state level.”

“Certainly, there are individual stories when the perpetuator received a sentence that may … have been deemed too lenient … but I’ve seen no evidence that there’s a trend among state law enforcement officials too ignore violent crimes motivated by prejudice,” he said.

Holder responded “there are incidents” when the federal government needs to assist in prosecution. He referenced a case in California involving people of South Asian origin “where threats were made before an assault actually occurred and that matter was not pursued.”

Hatch also expressed concern about language in the bill, saying that the Justice Department could become involved in cases where crimes are committed simply “because of” a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

This language, Hatch said, poses the problem of making all crimes committed against people of these classes to be considered hate crimes.

But Holder denied this could happen because “specific protective categories” have to be proven for an act to qualify as a hate crime.

“The mere membership of a person in a particular group would not be sufficient to trigger the jurisdiction of this statute,” Holder said. “The focus really is on what was the motivation of the defendant in perpetuating the violent act.”

Sessions presented to Holder two different hypothetical situations: one in which an LGBT activist is killed after making a speech in support of LGBT rights, and another in which a religious figure is killed by an LGBT activist after making an anti-gay speech. Sessions said the first action could be classified as a hate crime, but the second would not.

“Is there a reason for someone to think that this is odd?” Sessions asked.

But Holder responded that Sessions was “focusing on speech” in his situations and not actions.

“The fact that somebody might strike somebody as a result of speech … and we do not have the indication that the attack was motivated by a person’s desire to strike at somebody who was in one of these protected groups — that would not be covered by the statute,” Holder said.

In comparison to the aggressive questioning from Republican lawmakers, Democratic senators voiced ...