That redudancy has always struck me as, well, redundant, and serves no actual purpose. You cannot kill someone 2x for murder, or sentence them to more than one natural life in prison except in some abstract, metaphysical universe.

Is that to say that, no, you do not recognize the value in pursuing any conviction beyond that which is necessary for the "maximum" sentence? Are you sure that this strict (I would even call it narrow) utilitarianism of yours isn't just an unfortunate consequence of a need to be logically consistent?

But for lesser crimes, say assault, two scenarios:

(a) Progressive Pete had a bad day at work and is at a watering hole. He's downed three beers and just topped them off with a shot of Wild Turkey. He's been listening to the male creature next to him hold forth on how the Bible says "fags" are an abomination, and there is no worse sin that homosexuality. Homosexuals are a blight upon the community and we gotta stop their "agenda," else Jesus will smite us. Progressive Pete hauls off and punches the orator, breaking his nose.

(b) Progressive Pete is the one doing the orating. He heard some fundamentalist on the news earlier that day fulminating against gays, and he is pissed. He's going on and on about those "damn fundies," and their sick understanding of God. The guy next to him -- assuming Progressive Pete is gay, and in any event not liking what he's hearing -- punches Pete and breaks his nose.

Should Pete be charged w/ a hate crime (in addition to assault) based on antipathy to religious belief in scenario (a), and the other bar patron so charged based on his belief that Pete is gay in scenario (b)?

First of all, you didn't address the value of imposing heavier penalties for lesser crimes that are considered "worse" than other lesser crimes. You went straight from your argument against compound sentencing for capital or life-sentence crimes to your hypothetical with Progressive Pete.

Anyway, as for the hypothetical, honestly, neither of those cases seem particularly worthy of prosecution under a hate crimes law. Even under the ostensibly more "sympathetic" scenario, it's far from clear or provable that the patron attacked Pete because he was gay, as opposed to because he was offended by the obnoxious crap Pete was going on about.

I mean, we could go around and around all day with hypotheticals supposedly showing that such and such law - even those that already exist, uncontroversially - is inherently unfair or subject to abuse. That's the nature of hypothetical fact scenarios, and the law generally, don't you think?

I think everyone wants harsher penalties for worse offenses. But why complicate matters? For example, should the law recognize twenty degrees (or more)of severity for taking a human life, because there's such a multitude of circumstances surrounding the commission of a homicide?

I'm not sure how legally recognizing the materially different nature of a violent crime committed because of a person's race, religion, etc. logically means we must codify twenty separate and distinct degrees of murder.

Or should we simply work within discretionary sentencing guidelines? After all, we don't write all differences of "better" or "worse" into law as specifically different crimes or degrees of crime: we leave it up to the discretion of judges and juries to take extenuating or aggravating circumstances into account.

Actually, we do write differences of criminal degree and kind into law. The degrees of murder are generally (I am aware of no exceptions) codified as separate offenses - their maximum sentences are distinct according to statute, even though there is leeway within those parameters. Simple assault is codified separately from aggravated assault, sexual assault separate from rape, and on and on. The law makes these distinctions all the time, and sometimes based on subtle differences in method, circumstance, or intent.

It seems that many people apply an exceptional level of scrutiny to hate crimes that they fail or refuse to apply to a panoply of other crimes that are logically analogous. I do believe this is largely the result of insidiously permeated "right-wing memes," as Euripides very astutely noted.

Again you beat me to one of my points. At least I'm not alone here!

Not that it really matters - this is actually kind of fun.