Tina Smith: “I say to the Senator, I wonder, as you recounted some of these horrendous acts that have occurred, if you are familiar…”

“I say to the Senator, I wonder, as you recounted some of these horrendous acts that have occurred, if you are familiar with the Wisconsin case that is called Wisconsin v. Todd Mitchell. It is the 1993 case in which Chief Justice William Rehnquist authored the decision upholding hate crimes legislation. As it says in this preamble: The question presented in this case is whether this penalty enhancement is prohibited by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. We hold that it is not. Sir, this was a unanimous decision. And Justice Rehnquist--again, you would probably agree with me, I say to the Senator--is one of the more conservative justices. He wrote: Thus, although the statute punishes criminal conduct, it enhances the maximum penalty for conduct motivated for a discriminatory point of view more severely than the same conduct engaged in for some other reason or for no reason at all. Because the only reason for the enhancement is the defendant's discriminatory motive for selecting his victim. . . . And that was the man's race. Justice Rehnquist held it is entirely appropriate to look at the man's motive in ultimately ascribing the severity of the penalty that was handed down for this assault that was made by a White man on a Black man. It was prosecuted under the Federal Hate Crimes Act.”