Is there such a thing as a "hate crime?"

Of course there is. There are many motives for crimes. The human heart -- to say nothing of the criminal mind -- can be a dark and complicated place, subject to violent weather.

But the law likes to work in clarity and well-lighted, advertent consciousness. For purposes of law, which is the operative word? "Hate"? Or "crime"? Which of them is the crime? The thought? Or the deed? Is it not enough for the crime to be a crime? Does the crime become more heinous because hate comes along as a vicious junior partner?

Suppose that a murder is done without hatred. Suppose, for example, that Matthew Shepard's killers had been motivated merely to rob him, in a dispassionate sort of way -- strictly business? Would that dispassion ("Sorry, Matt, but we can't have a witness...") earn the killers 10 or 15 years off their sentence -- time off for good behavior? In any case, Matthew Shepard's killers have been condemned to death. Would the people of Wyoming, or the gay rights movement, feel any better if the men had been convicted of a hate crimes violation?

If the hate thought ("I hate Jews/ blacks/ gay people/ Catholics/ old people/ Walloons/ Bosnian Muslims/ Italians/ Latinos/ Other") flashed for an instant in the perpetrator's brain, like summer lightning, but no deed was done, then would the mere thought -- tagging along as, so to speak, cheerleader in the vivid, if Orwellian, phrase "hate crime" -- be worthy, in itself, of 10 to 15 years in jail? If not, then why, under hate crimes law, is this matter of the perpetrator's state of mind taken into consideration?

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