WPBN: A rejected bill was reintroduced in the House of Representatives in advance of the legislative session that will take place the following year. Subsequently, the debate on the enactment of a legislation to raise the punishments for proven hate crimes in South Carolina will soon begin again.
In the next year, the “Senator Clementa C. Pinckney Hate Crimes Act” will be presented to the House of Representatives.
If it is demonstrated that a crime was motivated by hatred based on someone’s “race, color, religion, sex, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, or physical or mental disability,” the bill would add penalty increases that may result in fines of up to $10,000 and a maximum of five years in prison.
Among the two states that do not have a law against hate crimes, South Carolina is one of them.
This year, Representative Wendell Gilliard, a Democrat from Charleston, reintroduced the measure, which was titled in honor of Clementa Pinckney, a state senator and the pastor of Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church. Pinckney was one of the nine people who were killed in the shooting that took place in a church in Charleston in 2015.
“We should have already have gotten it done by virtue of that alone,” Rep. Gilliard stated. “And to have one of our own members, our own soldiers, state senator Clementa Pinckney, to be among the victims. You know, it says a lot about how far we’ve come and what we have to do.”
It is also said by him that the law would mandate the recording of hate crimes in the state of South Carolina.
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Why advocates argue that a state law against hate crimes is necessary
The Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which was named after Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr., is a federal act that prohibits certain types of hate crimes.
According to Mark Yancy, a professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, it was enacted in 2009 as a response to the infamous killings of Matthew Shepard, who was killed because he was gay, and James Byrd Jr., who was murdered because of his race.
Both of these murders occurred in 2009. On the other hand, according to Yancy, federal prosecutors are unable to pursue all of those crimes, and an additional state legislation allows for the raising of penalties to take place at the local level.
“The federal government may feel like it’s not necessary to expend some of their resources,” Yancy stated. “The crime may not be serious enough to expend their resources on certain types of state crimes, so having a fallback state crime option is really beneficial for these types of cases.”
If the law is approved, it will strengthen the penalty for hate-motivated crimes rather than creating a new one, which can make the prosecution of certain instances more difficult, according to Yancy.
“So, typically, prosecutors are not required to prove motive, but if they wanted this sentencing enhancement, it would add an element, and they would have to prove to a jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the reason the victim was targeted was because of their race or their color or their religion or their national origin, gender, sexual orientation or disability,” Yancy stated.
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Similar measures have stuck in the Senate on several occasions, while passing the South Carolina House on several occasions. In light of the tenth anniversary of the Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting, Gilliard stated it would be moving to witness it come to pass during this session.
“We’ll need the civic organizations on our side to help push it forward,” Gilliard stated. “We’re going to need the faith-based community of all religions, once again, to help us build a coalition to get the message across come second week in January and hopefully moving forward.”
