After discussing the legal facets of hate crimes on Friday evening, a panel at Duke Law School came to the conclusion that there are significant weaknesses in hate crime legislation at both the state and the federal level. 

Nearly 125 students, faculty and community members from Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State attended the “Deconstructing a Hate Crime” event, which came a year after Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha and her sister Razan Abu-Salha were shot and killed in Chapel Hill.

“In North Carolina, our hate crimes are a joke. They have no teeth,” said Nura Sediqe, a panelist and doctoral student studying political science at Duke University. 

Chris Brook, another panelist and legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina said that part of the problem is that most of the district attorneys, lawyers, politicians and law enforcement are white. 

“They are not willing to wrestle with animus as an animating factor and will latch onto any other explanation to avoid difficult and, truth be told, dislocating conversations,” Brook said. 

Another reason for weak hate crime laws in the state and country is that “politicians don’t face hate,” according to Joseph Cheshire, the attorney handling the murder case of Deah, Yusor and Razan.

In 2014, the total number of hate crimes decreased from 5,828 to 5,479. Every subset of hate crimes decreased except for hate crimes against Muslims, according to Brook. 

However, it is very difficult to prosecute a hate crime, and if every hate crime were prosecuted, the United States would not be able to afford it, according to Cheshire. The tragic murders of Deah, Yusor and Razan are not currently set to be tried as a hate crime. After the killings, Craig Hicks of Chapel Hill turned himself in, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and is facing the death penalty.

“You can’t look at that case in any objective way and not know that those three young people, those bright candles, were snuffed out because of hate,” Cheshire said. “I don’t think that anyone in the federal government from people high up in the Justice Department to law enforcement officers have any doubt in their minds that this was a hate crime. I think the president of the U.S. made it clear that this was a hate crime.”  

When the news of the shootings first broke, law enforcement authorities alleged it might have resulted from an ongoing dispute over a parking spot. 

“I think [the Chapel Hill police chief] knew early on in the investigation that he made a mistake, and that the department made a mistake,” Cheshire said. “I think everyone on the prosecution side of this case knows and understands what this case is about and why these beautiful lights were put out — and that it was hate and not a parking dispute.” 

Through her own research, Nermeen Arastu, a clinical law professor at the City University of New York School of Law, has found that law enforcement officials and the Department of Homeland Security have been guilty of targeting Muslims.  

After 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security was created, and one of its missions was to register Muslims within the department, even if they had been in the country for decades or their whole life, Arastu said. 

One of the clauses of the Patriot Act gave law enforcement officials the authority to intensely screen Muslims who had applied to immigrate to the U.S. 

“People who had any supposed ties that government agencies could be deemed a threat,” Arastu said. “This could be as simple as you share a name with someone on a list. This could be just that you attended a mosque that someone once went to. These connections are very arbitrary, but if you are deemed a threat, your immigration process could be delayed, denied or you could be deported from this country.” 

The New York Police Department partnered with the Department of Homeland Security and F.B.I. to conduct surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods and communities by listening to their conversations. 

“They believed these communities had something scary,” Arastu said. “They were going to what they called ‘hot spots,’ which were halal butcher shops, book stores, Shisha bars, kabob restaurants. They were just hanging out hoping to find something suspicious.” 

After years of expensive surveillance, Arastu said in no instances did information gathered lead to discovering criminal activity. 

Mannirmal Jawa, a sophomore studying international studies at NC State, said she attended to learn more about hate crime legislation.  

“I wanted to have my questions answered of what’s wrong with North Carolina’s hate crime legislation and why it wasn’t applied in this case and why it can’t be applied to felonies, and I think I had that answered,” she said. “I wanted inspiration to fix it myself and to learn how to do so.” 

Farris Barakat, Deah’s brother, said he was surprised to see the interest that those who attended had in the case. 

“I definitely thought having Cheshire here and others speaking on this issue of federal hate crime, and state hate crime, and how does it matter and how it applies to this particular case was important so they could hear it from an objective force,” he said.