Louie Gohmert: “yesterday, this body passed the gentleman from Michigan's (Mr. Conyers) hate crime bill with very little notice. Some…”

“yesterday, this body passed the gentleman from Michigan's (Mr. Conyers) hate crime bill with very little notice. Some here were heard to say, oh, well, they will just take it out in conference. However, there is a decent chance that will not happen. It is true that people who act out of hate can and do cause devastation and severe hurt. There is no question about that. Those who cause such harm deserve and should be punished severely. As a former judge, I have sentenced and severely punished people acting out of hate, including signing legal orders that the perpetrators should be put to death. Ironically, the cases often cited as a basis for creating hate crime laws usually include the horrible dragging death of the African American in Texas or the poor young man in Texas who was killed for being a homosexual. The main perpetrators in those cases got the death penalty that I believe they deserved. Those were cases in which no hate crime law would have made any difference whatsoever; yet they are constantly cited as a reason for it. In the dragging death case, I personally might support punishment by allowing the victim's despondent family to choose the rope or chain and the terrain over which to drag the heartless defendant to inflict the death penalty. But the hate crime laws do not offer a more painful form of capital punishment.…”