Georgia court throws out state's hate crimes law

The state Supreme Court tossed out Georgia's hate crimes law Monday, meaning state lawmakers will have to revisit a roiling debate that divided them deeply four years ago. The law barely passed the Legislature in 2000 after bitter arguments about whether some crimes are worse than others when bigotry is in the heart of the accused. It passed only after protections for gay people were removed and the law rewritten to vaguely refer to "bias or prejudice." Of the 48 states with hate-crimes laws, Georgia's was the only one not to specify who would be protected. The 7-0 Supreme Court decision, which called the 4-year-old law "unconstitutionally vague," came in the case of a man and woman convicted of assaulting two black men in Atlanta's Little Five Points neighborhood. Angela Pisciotta and Christopher Botts, both white, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault for badly beating brothers Che and Idris Golden while screaming racial epithets in April 2002 and were sentenced to six years in prison. A Fulton County judge added two more years to their sentences under the hate crimes law, which called for up to five extra years in prison. [more ]