{"id":123,"date":"2026-04-28T20:05:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T18:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/journalists\/why-are-hate-crimes-so-hard-to-convict-in-court\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T20:05:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T18:05:24","slug":"why-are-hate-crimes-so-hard-to-convict-in-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/journalists\/why-are-hate-crimes-so-hard-to-convict-in-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Why are hate crimes so hard to convict in court?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Three<\/figure>\n

Reading Time: <\/span> 8<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

One May evening in 2022, two Filipino women \u2014 mother and daughter \u2014 went to pick up snacks at a McDonald\u2019s drive-thru in North Hollywood when a white man allegedly rear-ended their car, drove alongside them and began to shout racial slurs<\/a>, threatening to kill them. <\/p>\n

Nerissa Roque, the mother, called the police and husband Gabriel Roque, who showed up before officers did. As daughter Patricia recorded on her cell phone, the attacker tried to open her locked door, the video showed<\/a>, pushed Gabriel Roque to the ground \u2014 breaking his rib \u2014 and grabbed<\/a> Nerissa Roque by her throat. A bystander intervened and stopped the assault, according to news reports. <\/p>\n

Police did not arrest the man, Nicholas Weber. He instead received a citation to appear in court and later was charged with two felony batteries with hate crime enhancements. But a year later, the judge dropped the hate crime enhancements and charged Weber with two felony assaults and driving under the influence. <\/p>\n

The family was stunned. <\/p>\n

\u201cI went there with the hope that the court would shed more light to what happened to us,\u201d Gabriel Roque said at a July 2023 community panel<\/a> on stopping Asian hate. \u201cInstead of getting the truth out, the truth was twisted; therefore, justice was not served.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Roques\u2019 violent experience follows a national trend stoked in part by anti-Asian rhetoric amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But prosecuting hate crimes successfully is rare, leaving victims disappointed. <\/p>\n

To convict someone of a hate crime, the offense must be motivated by a person\u2019s prejudice  against an individual\u2019s \u201crace, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender or gender identity,\u201d according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. <\/p>\n

In the Roques\u2019 case, the court concluded<\/a> the evidence was insufficient for a hate crime charge due to the defendant\u2019s actions toward a non-Asian bystander and the fact that the racial slurs took place approximately 10-15 minutes before the physical attack. The non-Asian bystander left the scene, and it\u2019s not clear if police ever identified and questioned the witness about the incident.  <\/strong><\/p>\n

Experts estimate an average of 250,000 hate crimes were committed in the United States each year between 2004 and 2015, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.<\/a> But the lack of reporting is common and problematic \u2014 the National Crime Victimization Survey found that about half of hate crimes are never reported to police<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Michael Lieberman, a senior policy counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said there are many obstacles to prosecuting a hate crime case and that often starts from the very beginning. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, SPLC is a nonprofit that specializes in civil rights and public interest litigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a gap in reporting,\u201d said Lieberman, who has spent three decades working on hate crime issues, including testifying before Congress, writing and advocating for hate crime legislation. \u201cIf you don\u2019t have accurate data, you cannot effectively address the problem. And we do not have accurate data. The FBI has been trying to collect this data since 1991.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Texas, for example, only eight cases ended in convictions from the nearly 1,000 hate crimes reported from 2010 to 2015, according to an analysis by ProPublica.<\/a> Nationwide, prosecutors pursue charges for traditional criminal offenses \u2014 if anything \u2014 when evidence like hate speech is absent<\/a>, hampering their ability to show bias after an attack takes place on people from marginalized communities<\/a>.  <\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a> summed it up this way: \u201cResearchers, advocates and law enforcement officials have described a breakdown at nearly every step of the justice system leading to a disturbing conclusion: Hate crimes go unpunished.\u201d<\/p>\n

For victims, the lack of culpability is compounded by the absence of institutional support. A 2022 U.S. survey<\/a> of crime survivors found that only 20% received any aid from the criminal justice system, with the majority of victims finding support in their community or the health care system. More obstacles appear for undocumented victims.<\/p>\n

Yet these cracks in the handling of hate crimes also reveal critical reporting opportunities. Media coverage, along with pressure from advocacy groups, can increase the visibility<\/a> of hate crimes and potentially keep cases from falling off the radar. For journalists seeking to investigate cases in their own community, here\u2019s an overview of the systemic barriers facing hate crime survivors.<\/p>\n

\"Gabriel
After a judge dropped the hate crime enhancement on a felony assault that left him with a broken rib, Gabriel Roque said justice was not served. (Photo courtesy of John Haas)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lack of reporting and convictions: \u2018systemic neglect\u2019<\/h2>\n

Before a hate crime case can enter the criminal justice system, victims must acknowledge what they\u2019ve experienced was a hate crime and report it to law enforcement. <\/p>\n

\u201cA major factor in under-reporting is distrust and lack of confidence in the police, especially for historically marginalized victims,\u201d writes<\/a> Brendan Lantz, an associate professor at Florida State University who studies hate crime victimization. <\/p>\n

Lantz and his colleagues found<\/a> that hate crime victims don\u2019t report the crimes not because they thought \u201cthe police couldn\u2019t <\/em>do something\u201d but because they thought \u201cthe police wouldn\u2019t <\/em>do something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Undocumented survivors are also wary of revealing their status to police. According to a 2015 report by the Center for Migration Studies and the Migration Policy Institute, 1 out of every 7 Asian immigrants<\/a> is undocumented. <\/p>\n

When survivors do come forward to law enforcement, officers must correctly identify and acknowledge the bias motivation related to the incident in order to proceed with hate crime charges. But law enforcement often lacks the appropriate training and resources<\/a> for investigation. Hate crime legislation is not uniform across the U.S., and a handful of states<\/a>, including Arkansas, South Carolina and Wyoming, don\u2019t have hate crime laws at all. <\/p>\n

“One of the most important things about hate crime laws is just to be able to call a crime what it is,” Lieberman said. “It’s just validating for the community.”<\/p>\n

But one of the biggest problems in documenting hate crimes is lack of accountability when law enforcement agencies don\u2019t collect this information. In 2019, 86% of such agencies<\/a> reported zero hate crimes in their jurisdiction.<\/p>\n

While that may be accurate for some jurisdictions, Lantz said, it\u2019s statistically unlikely for the majority. Investigating this data and whether any hate crimes did in fact occur in these areas could potentially reveal \u201csystemic neglect,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

As a starting point, ProPublica developed a \u201creporting recipe<\/a>\u201d for journalists on how to request hate crime data from their local police departments. Some of those tips included: <\/p>\n