ACLU Letter to the Senate Expressing Concerns with the Smith Hate Crimes Amendment to the Defense Department Authorization Bill

RE: Concerns With the Smith Hate Crimes Amendment to the Defense Department Authorization Bill

Dear Senator:

As you debate and consider the hate crimes amendment offered by Senator Smith to the Defense Department authorization bill, the American Civil Liberties Union urges you to address two important shortcomings of the legislation. Specifically, we urge you to support amending the hate crimes legislation by (i) excluding evidence of speech that is unrelated to the crime and (ii) by further limiting the federal government's jurisdiction to prosecute when state or local prosecutors are diligently investigating and prosecuting a person for the same crime.

The ACLU believes that the Congress can and should expand federal jurisdiction to prosecute criminal civil rights violations when state and local governments are unwilling or unable to prosecute. At the same time, we also believe that these prosecutions should not include evidence of mere abstract beliefs or mere membership in an organization from becoming a basis for such prosecutions. To accomplish that goal, a stronger federal response to criminal civil rights violations must be balanced with the need to protect free speech. In addition, the primary responsibility for such criminal prosecutions should rest on the states instead of the federal government.

The Need to Provide Stronger Protection of Free Speech

The ACLU strongly urges the Senate to amend the Smith hate crimes amendment to limit its potential chilling effect on constitutionally protected speech. A change to the Smith amendment to provide that:

Evidence of expressions or associations of the accused may not be introduced as substantive evidence at trial unless the evidence specifically relates to the crime charged. Nothing in this section shall affect the rules of evidence governing the impeachment of a witness.

will reduce or eliminate the possibility that the federal government could obtain a criminal conviction on the basis of evidence of speech that had no role in the chain of events that led to any alleged violent act proscribed by the statute.

This proposed provision exactly copies a paragraph in the Washington State hate crimes statute. Wash. Rev. Code § 9A.36.080(4). This Washington State language is not new; the paragraph was added to the Washington State statute as part of an amendment in 1993. The ACLU has conferred with litigators involved in hate crimes prevention in Washington state, who report no complaints that the provision inappropriately impedes prosecutions.

On its face, the Smith amendment punishes only the conduct of intentionally selecting another person for violence because of that person's race, color, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. The prosecution must prove the conduct of intentional selection of the victim. Thus, the Smith amendment, like the present principal criminal civil rights statute, 18 U.S.C. § 245 (""section 245""), punishes discrimination (an act), not bigotry (a belief).

The federal government usually proves the intentional selection element of section 245 prosecutions by properly introducing ample evidence related to the chain of events. For example, in a recent section 245 prosecution based on race, a federal court of appeals found that the prosecution met its burden of proving that the defendant attacked the victim because of his race by introducing admissions that the defendant stated that ""he had once killed a nigger queen,"" that he attacked the victim ""[b]ecause he was a black fag,"" and by introducing evidence that the defendant allowed a white gay man to escape further attack, but relentlessly pursued the black gay victim.

Although the Justice Department maintains that it usually avoids attempting to introduce evidence proving nothing more than that a person holds racist or other bigoted views, it has at least occasionally introduced such evidence. In at least one decision, a federal court of appeals expressly found admissible such evidence that was wholly unrelated to the chain of events that resulted in the violent act. United States v. Dunnaway, 88 F.3d 617 (8th Cir. 1996). The court upheld the admissibility of a tattoo of a skinhead group on the inside lip of the defendant because ""[t]he crime in this [section 245] case involved elements of racial hatred."" Id. at 618. The tattoo was admissible even in the absence of any evidence in the decision linking the skinhead group to the violent act.

The decision admitting that evidence of a tattoo confirmed our concerns expressed in the ACLU's brief filed with the Supreme Court in support of the Wisconsin hate crimes penalty enhancement statute. In asking for guidance from the Court on the applicability of such statutes, the ACLU stated its concern that evidence of speech should not be relevant unless ""the government proves that [the evidence] is directly related to the underlying crime and probative of the defendant's discriminatory intent."" The ACLU brief urged that, ""[a]t a minimum, any speech or association that is not contemporaneous with the crime must be part of the chain of events that led to the crime. Generalized evidence concerning the defendant's racial views is not sufficient to meet this test.""

The ACLU's concern with the Smith amendment is that we will see even more such evidence admitted in section 245 prosecutions if the Smith amendment is enacted without an evidentiary restriction. Many of the arguments made in favor of expanding section 245 are very different than the arguments made in favor of enacting section 245 nearly 31 years ago. At that time, the focus was on giving the federal government jurisdiction to prosecute numerous murders of African-Americans, including civil rights workers, which had gone unpunished by state and local prosecutors. The intent was to have a federal backstop to state and local law enforcement.

Although the Smith amendment will also serve that important purpose in creating federal jurisdiction, its proponents are focusing on ""combating hate,"" fighting ""hate groups,"" and identifying alleged perpetrators by their membership in such groups--even in the absence of any link between membership in the group and the violent act. Those arguments are very different from the arguments made in support of section 245 when it passed as an important part of the historic Civil Rights Act of 1968.

The danger is that--after a debate focused on combating ""hate""--courts, litigants, and jurors applying an expanded and more powerful section 245 may be more likely to believe that speech-related evidence is a proper basis for proving the intentional selection element of the offense, even when it was unrelated to the chain of events leading to a violent act. The focus may be on proving the selection element by showing ""guilt by association"" with groups whose bigoted views we may all find repugnant, but which may have had no role in committing the violent act. We should add that evidence of association could also just as easily focus on many groups representing the very persons that the Smith amendment was drafted to protect.[1] Our suggested amendment will preclude all such evidence from becoming the basis for prosecution, unless it was part of the chain of events leading to the violent act.

However, the proposed evidentiary amendment is not overly expansive. The provision will bar only evidence that had no specific relationship to the underlying violent offense. It will have no effect on the admissibility of evidence of membership or belief that bears a specific relationship to the underlying crime. Thus, the proposal will not bar all expressions or associations of the accused.

Finally, we recognize that statutory restrictions on the admissibility of evidence in criminal matters are not common. However, such restrictions are not without precedent. In fact, the basic structure for the new paragraph is from 18 U.S.C.A. § 2101(b), which defines admissible evidence for an element of the federal riot statute. We believe that the potential for misuse of an expanded section 245 is significant enough to warrant a statutory restriction on the admissibility of certain evidence.

The Importance of Deferring to Diligent State Prosecutors

The new certification requirement in the Smith amendment has less of the protection that the certification requirement in 18 U.S.C. § 245 provides against unwarranted dual prosecutions of the same defendant. In section 245, the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, Associate Attorney General, or a designated Assistant Attorney General must certify that a federal prosecution ""is in the public interest and necessary to secure substantial justice."" By contrast, the certification requirement in the Smith amendment requires one of the designated Justice Department officials, upon reasonable belief that a violation of the act occurred, to certify that federal jurisdiction is appropriate because ""(A) the State does not have jurisdiction or does not intend to exercise jurisdiction; (B) the State has requested that the Federal Government assume jurisdiction; (C) the State does not object to the Federal Government assuming jurisdiction; or (D) the verdict obtained pursuant to State charges left demonstratively unvindicated the Federal interest in eradicating bias-motivated violence"" (emphasis added).

Thus, unlike the certification requirement in section 245, the Smith amendment does not require any certification that a federal prosecution is in the public interest or is necessary to secure substantial justice. In fact, unless the state prosecutors specifically refuse the federal government's jurisdiction or there is a verdict or sentence on state charges that satisfies the federal government, the federal government can always exercise jurisdiction under the Smith amendment. For that reason, the ACLU urges the Senate to amend the Smith hate crimes legislation to add an additional certification requirement that:

[The Attorney General must certify that the] prosecution by the United States is in the public interest and necessary to secure substantial justice.

The ACLU is concerned that, without requiring federal certification that a federal prosecution is in the public interest and necessary to secure substantial justice, the certification provision in the Smith amendment could result in an unwarranted expansion of federal authority to prosecute defendants--even when a competent state prosecution is available.

Thank you for your consideration of our concerns on this issue. Please do not hesitate to call us if you have any questions regarding this legislation.

Very truly yours,

Laura W. Murphy
Director

Christopher E. Anders
Legislative Counsel

[1] For example, many of the principal First Amendment association decisions arose from challenges to governmental investigations of civil rights and civil liberties organizations. See, e.g., Gibson v. Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, 372 U.S. 539 (1962) (holding that the NAACP could refuse to disclose its membership list to a state legislature investigating alleged Communist infiltration of civil rights groups); Bates v. City of Little Rock, 361 U.S. 516 (1960) (reversing a conviction of NAACP officials who refused to comply with local ordinances requiring disclosure of membership lists); NAACP v. State of Alabama, 357 U.S. 449 (1958) (holding as unconstitutional a judgment of contempt and fine on the NAACP for failure to produce its membership lists); New Jersey Citizen Action v. Edison Township, 797 F.2d 1250 (3rd Cir. 1986) (refusing to require the fingerprinting of door-to-door canvassers for a consumer rights group), cert. denied, sub nom. Piscataway v. New Jersey Citizen Action, 479 U.S. 1103 (1987); Familias Unidas v. Briscoe, 619 F.2d 391 (5th Cir. 1980) (refusing a request to compel the disclosure of the membership list of a public school reform group); Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador v. Sessions, 705 F.Supp. 25 (D.D.C. 1989) (denying a request for preliminary injunction against FBI's dissemination of information collected on foreign policy group); Alliance to End Repression v. City of Chicago, 627 F.Supp. 1044 (1985) (police infiltrated and photographed activities of a civil liberties group and an anti-war group).