Court To Rule On Hate Crimes

The Supreme Court will referee a dispute over how to punish hate crimes, setting the stage for a ruling that will affect anti-bias laws in most states.

The court said Monday it will decide whether state judges can impose longer prison terms based on their own determinations that crimes were sparked by prejudice. A decision is expected by late June.

At issue in a New Jersey case is whether a jury, not a judge, should decide if racial hatred prompted a man to fire shots into a black family's home.

Nearly all the states enacted hate-crime laws in the 1980s. They provide extra punishment when crime victims were selected because of their race or religion, or in some instances sexual orientation.

New Jersey was one of the first to adopt such a law, in 1981. The state bans the burning of crosses or placing of swastikas on public or private property with the intention of terrorizing others through threats of violence.

Also outlawed is placing such graffiti on houses of worship or in cemeteries. The state's law was expanded in 1990 to provide stiffer penalties for such common crimes as assault and harassment if prejudice played a part in selecting the victim.

Charles C. Apprendi Jr. of Vineland, N.J., was arrested in 1994 after shots were fired into the home of a black family living in his otherwise all-white neighborhood. No one was injured in the shooting.

Apprendi admitted he fired four or five shots into the house, telling police he wanted to give the family who lived there a message that they did not belong in his neighborhood.

Apprendi pleaded guilty to a firearm violation and possessing a bomb in his house, all of which carried a maximum 10-year prison sentence. At a plea hearing, he admitted his purpose for shooting at the house was to frighten the family.

After prosecutors sought a stiffened sentence under the state's hate-crime law, the state trial judge imposed a 12-year term. The judge said prosecutors had offered persuasive evidence that Apprendi's act was racially motivated.

Apprendi appealed the 12-year sentence, saying the hate-crime issue should have been decided by a jury using the highest legal standard whether prosecutors provided proof of racial bias beyond a reasonable doubt.

The New Jersey Supreme Court, ruling against Apprendi, upheld his sentence by a 5-2 vote last June.

In other action Monday, the court:

• Killed part of a race-bias lawsuit filed by a white man who was denied admission to a University of Texas doctoral program. The justices found a federal appeals court wrongly ordered the case to trial despite evidence that an affirmative action program played no role in Francois Lesage's failure to gain admittance.

• Let stand rulings allowing Texas to continue permitting young witnesses in sex abuse cases to testify via closed-circuit television.

• Agreed to study a Louisiana lawsuit accusing Abbott Laboratories, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Mead Johnson & Co. of illegally conspiring to raise the price of baby formula. At issue is whether the lawsuit is the type that can move from state to federal court.

• Agreed to use a Mississippi case to clarify when people can go to federal court to challenge the government's denial of Social Security disability benefits.

• Decided to review a Massachusetts law that limits state purchases from companies doing business in countries with poor human rights records, such as Myanmar. Opponents say such laws undermine the federal government's ability to carry out foreign policy.