A. J. ARAVE, WARDEN, PETITIONER v. THOMAS E. CREECH
Justice Blackmun , with whom Justice Stevens joins, [n.1] however, the majority's reconstruction only highlights the deficient character of the nebulous formulation that it seeks to advance. Because the metaphor "cold blooded" by which Idaho defines its "utter disregard" circumstance is both vague and unenlightening, and because the majority's recasting of that metaphor is not dictated by common usage, legal usage, or the usage of the Idaho courts, the statute fails to provide meaningful guidance to the sentencer as required by the Constitution. Accordingly, I dissent.
In legal usage, the metaphor "cold blood" does have a specific meaning. "Cold blood" is used "to designate a willful, deliberate, and premeditated homicide." Black's Law Dictionary 260 (6th ed. 1990). As such, the term is used to differentiate between first and second degree murders. [n.13] For example, in United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152 (1982), Justice O'Connor, writing for the Court, described the District of Columbia's homicide statute: " `In homespun terminology, intentional murder is in the first degree if committed in cold blood, and is murder in the second degree if committed on impulse or in the sudden heat of passion.' " Id., at 170, n. 18 (1982), quoting Austin v. United States, 127 U. S. App. D.C. 180, 188, 382 F. 2d 129, 137 (1967). Murder in cold blood is, in this sense, the opposite of murder in "hot blood." Arguably, then, the Osborn formulation covers every intentional or first degree murder. An aggravating circumstance so construed would clearly be unconstitutional under Godfrey.
Arave v. Creech, 507 U.S. 463 (1993).
Just thought you might like to know that and the word hate and crime also have varried meaning within the law as well. They do not just designate a predisposition or prejudice prior to commiting a crime.
Plus there are a few more things to consider here when discussing these hate crimes laws,
R. A. V. v. CITY OF ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA
After allegedly burning a cross on a black family's lawn, petitioner R. A. V. was charged under, inter alia, the St. Paul, Minnesota, Bias Motivated Crime Ordinance, which prohibits the display of a symbol which one knows or has reason to know "arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender." The trial court dismissed this charge on the ground that the ordinance was substantially overbroad and impermissibly content based, but the State Supreme Court reversed. It rejected the overbreadth claim because the phrase "arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others" had been construed in earlier state cases to limit the ordinance's reach to "fighting words" within the meaning of this Court's decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 572, a category of expression unprotected by the First Amendment. The court also concluded that the ordinance was not impermissibly content based because it was narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest in protecting the community against bias motivated threats to public safety and order.
b) A few limited categories of speech, such as obscenity, defamation, and fighting words, may be regulated because of their constitutionally proscribable content. However, these categories are notentirely invisible to the Constitution, and government may not regulate them based on hostility, or favoritism, towards a nonproscribable message they contain. Thus the regulation of "fighting words" may not be based on nonproscribable content. It may, however, be underinclusive, addressing some offensive instances and leaving other, equally offensive, ones alone, so long as the selective proscription is not based on content, or there is no realistic possibility that regulation of ideas is afoot.
R. A. V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992)
It remains to be seen where all this is going, but the court has held in the past that these laws don't violate the 1st or the 14th as well soo we will see.
