terratogen wrote:
Lets say 2 people are killed...
One of them is gay, and the other is a relative who is not gay.
Both are senselessly skinned alive in the same exact fashion.
The motive for both crimes is because the killer hated their respective victim.
Why should the Gay person's killer get a heavier sentence?

Given those circumstances, I agree, they should not. To give you a different set of circumstances, jackass A goes to rob a liquor store and in the process of the robbery, shoots and kills the owner. That's first degree murder + armed robbery + a host of other charges. Jackass B heads down to the gay section of whatever city they are in for the purpose of beating/killing someone, and does so. Still first degree murder.

The first case, absent a Sheppard rule, will get a stiffer sentence because of the surrunding circumstances, even though there was no original intent to commit murder. I am in favor of the Sheppard rule because intent matters.

Now if you want to complicate things and change situation A to guy goes out with the simple intent to kill someone, you're probably talking about a serial killer and at that point the whole thing is heading into something different.

The reality of most murders is, they are crimes of passion/rage. The killer and victim know each other and some incident has escalated. The vast majority of the rest are crimes committed in the course of other crimes like the robbery I describe above. Only a very few are cases like Sheppard or Byrd or Virginia Tech or Iowa 16 years ago or Son of Sam or Green River or Dahmer. Yet which get the most attention? Those very few. Why? Because intent (and body count) matter.

RE: Pass the Matthew Shepard Act...