HORRY COUNTY, SC (WBTW) – South Carolina is one of four states without a hate crime law.
Georgia, Arkansas and Wyoming also do not currently have hate crime laws, but some advocates in Georgia are calling for one to be passed there after the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery.
In South Carolina, a hate crime bill was introduced following the shooting at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston. Previous hate crime bills had been introduced prior.
If the law passes, a hate crime would carry a separate punishment for those convicted of harming a person, or their property because of their race, sexuality, age, ethnic background or religion.
“Given the climate that we’re in right now, I think it’s important; it’s an important deterrent, State Representative, Cezar McKnight said. “It’s also important to punish acts that people commit against each other only because they are a different color or different ethnic background.”
McKnight is one of the bill’s sponsors and tells News13, the pandemic threw a wrench in the legislative process this year so he doesn’t see this bill becoming law in 2020, but has hope for the future.
“I can tell you it’s probably something we will not get to this year, but when we get back in January, when the new session starts, I see us, I see this coming to the floor, I definitely do,” McKnight explained.
Jonny McCoy is a civil rights attorney in Myrtle Beach who agrees it is time for a law like this to pass in the State.
“It’s important because of what it symbolizes,” McCoy said. “It symbolizes progress, it symbolizes equality, it symbolizes a movement in our jurisprudence that we are including protections for a class of people, multiple classes of people, who have been disenfranchised for centuries. “In the state of South Carolina, we have disenfranchised people longer than anybody else.”
McCoy said he is not surprised South Carolina is one of four remaining states without a hate crime law, but says some of the resistance for passing a law like this could be because it leaves room for interpretation.
“The aspect of it that is missing is, it needs to be narrowly tailored enough to only include actions which can be construed as discriminatory,” he explained. “Right now, it kinda leaves it open for interpretation.”
McCoy continued to say, a law like this could act as a deterrent.
“Right now if you commit an assault and you slur a racial slur, or utter a racial slur at the same time you’re committing the assault, there is no greater punishment for you than whatever is on the books, but according to the law proposed, if you say something or give indication that you committed the crime for some other hate reason, this law says that you should be punished consecutively or in addition to whatever the underlying charges are,” McCoy explained. “That’s a huge deterrent.”
