Transcripts for MSNBC The Beat With Ari Melber 20200511 22:55:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
should be. because there s always an ongoing debate about whether even the toughest laws, even if you were to have death penalty consequences, whether that would actually make a difference where somebody is in the throws of mental illness or so consumed by hate that they re going to do what they re going to do regardless of the consequences. i think it s a good sign that now almost all 50 states have hate crime statutes on the books and there s a federal hate crime statute also on the books. in terms of enforcement, i think that the state is looking at what they should be looking at. they have not yet charged a hate crimes offense. they ve charged attempted murder and burglary, which i think are obviously appropriate here. t is an ongoing debate. as to whether additional penalties would actually make a difference. but i think that having those statutes on the books does
how do we protect the people that worship with us. and it s a terrible thing to have to think about, but it s the reality of the world that we live in now. eric: just a few moments ago we had a former assemblyman who was head of a group dedicated to anti-semitism saying that there should be more hate laws, hate crimes, and he blamed the rhetoric of the left. we don t know the situation involving in situation in texas, what the motivation is, whether it is terrorism or domestic, but he made a point about the fact that in some cases the hate crime statutes are not strong enough and that there is too much divisive rhetoric around in the country today especially when dealing with religion. well, i don t necessarily agree with that. [inaudible] we have some laws. i think the laws are fine. i do agree about the lettering, and i think it s hateful and
that this individual was actually working with others, perhaps the method that they have taken charging him with the possession of drugs and the possession of firearms while addicted to drugs is a good solution. there are plenty of laws on the books. there are 51 federal crimes of terrorism. in addition, the fbi or the justice department has five hate crime statutes, so there are a lot of laws on the books and a lot of different ways to attack this problem. so it s not a matter of needing new laws, it s a matter of making sure that the fbi and the justice department are actually focused on this problem. part of the problem that we identified in a report that we published last year is that far right terrorism is deprioritized within the counterterrorism world. it s behind what the government calls international terrorism.
i believe it s been reported. i don t believe nbc s been able to confirm that detail. danny, this is a horrible story. no matter what kind of attack or crime it was. but what do prosecutors need to prove to categorize this as a hate crime? when a person commits a crime in illinois because of their actual or perceived race and a list of other things such as religion, they commit the crime of hate crimes. and every state has different hate crime statutes. some don t really have them at all. but the challenge with hate crimes is proving something that, in our criminal code, we don t normally have. prosecutors are not normally required to prove motive. motive is ordinarily not part of a crime. the law doesn t care why you rob the bank. they care that you rob the bank. but hate crimes are a little different. they do require a showing of motive. that an attack of some kind was motivated by a hatred or animus against someone s race.