Further, the victim was clearly targeted because he was gay, given that the defendant was a male hustler who went to Hula's Bar & Lei Stand in Waikiki, a popular gay nightclub, and hit on the victim, who took him back home.

Now, I'm of the belief that the initial motive was robbery, but you should know that the defense went out of its way to portray the victim as sexually aggressive, and that the defendant feared being raped. Incidentally, I should tell you that the victim was about 5'4" and 110 lbs., while the defendant was 6'2" and 210 lbs.

Well, as ludicrous as it sounds, the anti-gay defense worked. The defendant was found guilty of reckless endangerment and involuntary manslaughter, and sentenced to one year, including time already served. Given that he had been incarcerated for 14 months while awaiting, he walked out of the courtroom that afternoon a free man.

That's when I became a proponent of hate crimes legislation.

When a victim of a crime is clearly targeted for no other reason than his or her race, ethnicity or sexual orientation, and when the perpetrator is clearly motivated by prejudice and bigotry against said victim, that should qualify as a special circumstance.

A recent study by Dr. Gregory Herek, a UC-Davis psychology professor, found that nearly four in ten gay men and about one in eight lesbians and bisexuals in the United States have been the target of violence or a property crime because of their sexual orientation.

This has simply got to stop, Jeralyn. I'm sorry if hate crimes legislation makes your job as a defense attorney that much harder, but frankly, courts and juries most always consider motive when determining the ultimate disposition of defendants arraigned before them.

Now, should there be enhanced penalties for hate crimes? Well, no pun intended, but the jury's still out on that for me, and you would stand a far a better chance of swaying me on that argument than you currently do on the idea of equating hate crime with thought crime.

That said, the Matthew Shepard Act will allow judges and juries the opportunity to consider hate as a possible motive when conducting their deliberations, particularly with regard to crimes committed against members of the GLBT community.