by Michael Barbella
In February 2024, U.S. prosecutors won their first case under a federal hate crime statute that was expanded in October 2009 to encompass gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability. A South Carolina jury convicted Daqua Lameek Ritter of a hate crime for the August 2019 murder of Dime Doe, a Black transgender woman.
“The jury’s verdict sends a clear message: Black trans lives matter, bias-motivated violence will not be tolerated, and perpetrators of hate crimes will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement after Ritter’s conviction. “We want the Black trans community to know that you are seen and heard, that we stand with the LGBTQ+ community, and that we will use every tool available to seek justice for victims and their families.”
In October 2024, Ritter was sentenced to life in prison. South Carolina, where Doe was murdered, is one of two states—Wyoming is the other—without a state hate crimes law. Proposed hate crime legislation passed in the South Carolina House of Representatives in the 2023-2024 session; however, it stalled in the South Carolina Senate. While South Carolina has no hate crimes law, 19 cities and towns of the state’s 271 municipalities have passed hate crimes ordinances. South Carolina’s lack of a state hate crimes law did not impact the federal government’s ability to prosecute the case.
“The lack of a state-level hate crime law would not have made the case more difficult to prosecute,” says Christy Mallory, state and local policy director for The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, a think tank dedicated to conducting research on sexual orientation and gender identity law. “If anything, the lack of a state hate crimes law may make federal prosecutors more likely to act in those jurisdictions since there is not an analogous state law under which state or local prosecutors could act.”
Historic case
Ritter’s trial and subsequent conviction were landmark moments in the U.S. criminal justice system, as the case was the first to be prosecuted under the 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, signed into law by then President Barack Obama. Since its enactment, the U.S. government has prosecuted numerous hate crimes, but none have ever reached the trial stage, as the Doe murder case did.
“The Shepard-Byrd Act gives the FBI the authority to investigate crimes like this, and that’s vital,” Supervisory Special Agent Anthony Snead Jr. of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Civil Rights Unit, said in an October 2024 press statement after the verdict in the Doe case. “Just 15 years ago, we did not have the authority to investigate this act of violence. We want members of the LGBTQ+ community to feel heard and to feel comfortable being who they are. Because no one should be victimized for being who they are.”
Passage of the Act stemmed from the 1998 heinous murders of Shepard, a gay college student in Wyoming, and Byrd, a Black father of three from Texas. Matthew Shepard was 21 when two men approached him at a bar. The men took Shepard to a remote area where they robbed, beat and tortured him, eventually tying him to a fence and leaving him to die. Byrd, 49 years old at the time of his death, accepted a ride from three young white men, two of whom would later be identified as white supremacists. The men severely beat and tortured Byrd and then chained him to the back of their truck, dragging him for three miles.
History of hate crimes law
According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the current definition of a hate crime at the federal level is “a crime motivated by bias against race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability.”
The first modern federal hate crimes law was passed as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Restrictions on the law were that victims had to be engaged in certain federally protected activities, which included voting, serving jury duty, working a federal job, or attending school.
Criminal penalties for hate crimes vary by state and many include sentencing enhancements. A sentencing enhancement is a legal provision that increases the penalty of a crime. For example, a crime that would be considered a misdemeanor could be increased to a felony if a bias-related motive can be proven. At the federal level, punishment for bias-motivated violence can range from 10 years to life in prison, and in some cases, depending on the severity of the crime, the death penalty.
The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on enhanced sentencing for bias-motivated crimes with its 1993 ruling in Wisconsin v. Mitchell. The Court unanimously declared that enhanced sentencing does not violate the First Amendment and that harsher penalties in such cases are justified.
“This conduct is thought to inflict greater individual and societal harm,” U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote at the time. “Bias-motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims, and incite community unrest.”
In other words, when a hate crime occurs, someone from that protected class may see themselves in the victim. For example, in the case of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, someone from the LGBTQ+ and African American communities, respectively, may see the media coverage of those two deaths and think “that could have been me,” causing fear for their own safety and wellbeing.
The most recent hate crimes legislation was signed into law in 2021 by then President Joseph Biden. The Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act addressed the increased rise in anti-Asian hate brought on by the pandemic. It also improved data collection of hate crimes and provides assistance to law enforcement for investigating hate crimes. That act also includes the Khalid Jabara-Heather Heyer NO HATE Act, which provides funding for state agencies to establish state-run hate crimes reporting hotlines and assist victims who might be reluctant to report hate crimes.
Flawed laws
Some legal scholars are not convinced that hate crimes laws are fair in their implementation, and some say these laws are not needed at all.
In a 2016 opinion piece for Time magazine, the late James B. Jacobs, a professor at New York University School of Law and a criminal justice expert, argued that by including certain groups and excluding others, hate crime laws may be a form of discrimination and noted that these laws “re-criminalize conduct that is already criminal,” creating a “hierarchy of victims.”
“From the beginning, hate crime laws have simply given us something else to argue about: whose victimization should be punished more severely,” Professor Jacobs wrote. “So many crimes will be eligible for hate crime treatment that those victims who are not covered will, perhaps rightly, feel discriminated against.”
While on The New York Times’ podcast, The Argument, Steve Freeman, vice president of civil rights with the Anti-Defamation League in New York, talked about the nature of hate crime laws.
“It is ADL‘s view that these crimes definitely need to be taken more seriously. But that doesn’t necessarily mean there should be mandatory minimums or mandatory sentencing, mandatory punishment. It really means that the crimes are more serious because the impact they have is broader,” Freeman said. “And it remains a conversation about the best way to deal with that.”
On the same podcast, Kevin Nadal, a psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that he is not willing to give up on hate crime laws but recognizes that they are flawed.
“I’m not saying no hate crime laws because hate crimes don’t exist,” Professor Nadal said. “I’m saying reform on how hate crime laws are used.”
Hate in the Garden State
According to 2023 FBI crime statistics, there were 11,862 hate crime incidents nationwide, an increase of 228 over the previous year. Most incidents were in the race-based category, followed by religion-based crimes and crimes against the LGBTQ+ community.
In the Garden State, data compiled by the New Jersey State Police revealed a total of 2,699 bias incidents reported in 2023, a 22% increase over 2022 numbers. In New Jersey, anti-Black and anti-Jewish bias were the most common type of incident reported. The consensus of experts is that many hate crimes go unreported.
“Research indicates that hate crimes are underreported—both in terms of hate crimes statistics reported by state and local law enforcement agencies to the FBI and in terms of crimes reported by victims to law enforcement agencies,” Mallory notes. “The lack of clarity and consistency in hate crimes laws across jurisdictions could contribute to this problem.”
In March 2024, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin and the Division of Civil Rights announced the launch of the Community Peacemaker Collaborative. The initiative is intended to respond to the rise of bias and hate in New Jersey, including the significant uptick in antisemitism and Islamophobia. The new initiative seeks to prevent and respond to bias incidents by training individuals across all 21 counties—including community and student leaders—on conflict resolution techniques and best practices for responding to bias incidents.
Discussion Questions
- Do you think crimes motivated by bias or hate should be punished more severely? Why or why not?
- Consider the protected classes outlined in the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. What makes certain members of society “protected?” Do you believe there should be protected classes? Why or why not?
- Do you agree or disagree with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that hate crimes inflict “greater societal harm?” Explain your answer.
Glossary Words
analogous—comparable to.
convicted—to be found guilty of a criminal offense either by the verdict of a jury, the decision of a judge or by entering a guilty plea.
felony — a serious criminal offense usually punished by imprisonment of more than one year.
misdemeanor—a lesser crime, usually punishable by a fine or short jail term.
statute—legislation that has been signed into law.
This article originally appeared in the Respect winter 2025 issue.