The perp could argue any defense he liked, but it would be the judge or jury who would ultimately ascribe motivation. If for example he had a house full of white pride lit, was a neo nazi, hurled racist or xenophobic abuse during the crime, a jury could weigh this in determining motivation.

Example: a skinhead beating a jew could argue that he was just beating him as another person and his judaism was irrelevant to the assault. Any competent prosecutor would easily be able to demonstrate that for a skinhead to attack a jew, there must be at least some racial /religious motivation, and would therefore demand an additional punishment.

Is this unfair on skinheads? yes he would have got less for beating a Caucasian. But it disproportionately punishes something in society that we want to be disproportionately punished.

But sheeps and cow heads have economic value! Sheeps Brains and Cow Tongues are edible, whereas pig heads are not!

That’s why they used pig heads. I’m sure it has nothing at all to do with religion.

Signed, Chief Officer Of Dubious Justifications.

but rather than have a separate raft of race crimes on the books, why not have provision for a “suspect class”?

so that it compels the trial judge or jury to take into account if the crime has elements that are intimatadory to a subset of the population who are being victimized, if that group has

1. immutable traits
2. grossly unfair (or in this case intimidatory)
3. history of predudice & discrimination
4 political powerlessness

An example was the klan tactic of burning crosses on black private property. As an act it was barely criminal, but it was race based intimidation.

I think that such behaviour should be criminalized.

If someone enters your property and burns a cross, it is already criminal. The motivations for the crime might be useful in sentencing the person but I’m not sure there needs to be a separate class of “race-based crime” or “hate crime”.

Anyway, the defence to every “race-based crime” will simply be that it was motivated out of cultural or religious hatred or bigotry rather than because the victim had the wrong shaped eyes or the wrong skin colour. If you then argue that this special classification should extend also to religion and culture, then that opens up another can of worms.

Clearly this is a race/religion hate based action.

For example if they put up two sheep heads or two cow heads, then the action would lose its symbolic offense to Muslims. The action of trespass is minor, it is the symbolism of pig that has correctly been sen as most offensive.

I do believe that there should be a class of race based crime in the criminal code. Otherwise it will be easy to intimidate racial groups in the community without doing anything criminal.

An example was the klan tactic of burning crosses on black private property. As an act it was barely criminal, but it was race based intimidation.

I think that such behaviour should be criminalized.

The next issue is if religious based hate should also be criminalized, whilst it is equally intimidatory I believe that it should not.

The final point is, where does race based vilification stop and it becomes religious based vilification? That is much more difficult than it appears.

Imagine if this happened on a private residence of the only lebanese family in the district. Were the perps doing it because the family was Muslim, or was it because they were lebanese? and are lebanese racially distinct enough to be a suspect class racially, or is the hate of lebanese, hate of their culture or is it hate of their distinctive racial characteristics?

This is not a straightforward situation, but it is the role of government to stop the intimidation of groups in our community.

The US supreme court classification of “suspect class” is an effort to distinguish those groups of people to be treated equally by the law, perhaps its a variation of that we need to fight this type of intimidation.