Defending Against Hate Crimes Charges in California

Under California Penal Code 422.55 PC, it is a hate crime to harm, threaten, or harass a person because of their disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.  Of course, it is already a crime to intentionally harm, threaten, or harass someone. In other words, you can already be charged and prosecuted for a crime even if hatred for disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation were not a motivating factor in the commission of the crime.  

What California Penal Code 422.55 PC does is impose more severe penalties on crimes in which hate for one of the enumerated categories is a motivating factor. Additionally, it is possible to commit a hate crime in California even if the victim does not actually belong to a class protected by 422.55 PC. It is enough if you merely believe the victim belongs to a protected class, and act accordingly. To make this distinction less abstract, it is helpful to consider an example.

If you attempt to rob a man because he is Muslim and scream anti-Muslim slurs while committing the robbery, you can still be prosecuted for a hate crime in California even it turns out that the man is not actually a Muslim. In other words, it is your motivation that counts – not the objective facts regarding a victim’s belonging in a protected class. To return to the legal language of PC 422.55, you can be convicted of a hate crime so long as the state’s prosecutor can prove that you were biased against the victim because of your perception of his or her belonging to a protected class, and that it was because of this bias that you were motivated to commit a crime against them. Implicit in this requirement is the burden of the prosecutor to prove that you committed the alleged crime. In other words, to even reach the question of hateful motivation, the prosecutor must first prove that you harmed, threatened, or harassed the victim in the first place.