Quote Originally Posted by will641
It is not equal to punish a man 2x because he is a racist or homophobic or whatever. If a murder is racially motivated, so what? He is still going to get tried for murder.
Like euph touched on earlier, one's motive(s) for murder or other crimes is important and should affect their sentencing. A person who commits crimes based on differences of beliefs/race/etc. is obviously a larger threat to society than a person who commits a crime based on something more "understandable" like revenge. Take 2 scenarios:

1) A woman murders a man because she found out that he raped her child.
2) A black man murders a white man because he hates white people.

The racist murderer is obviously more of a threat to society than the "revenge" murderer unless somehow lots and lots of people start raping that woman's child.