Hate crimes can't be prosecuted if victim dies

Only in conservaworld. The land of missed opportunity.

It's hard to know what to make of an outrage like this, but I'll try to explain it.

In Louisville, a 17-year-old was fatally stabbed. The killing appears to have been racially motivated, as the assailants reportedly used racial slurs during the attack.

This clearly falls under the hate crime laws, right? Not so fast, a judge has ruled.

The court ruled that it can't be prosecuted as a hate crime, because Kentucky law says it's only a hate crime if the victim lives.

The problem goes back to the Kentucky legislature. Surprise, surprise. It turns out that back in 1998 when the hate crimes statute was written, lawmakers conveniently "overlooked" homicide when they wrote the law.

For this reason, Kentucky stands alone as the only one of the 50 states that cannot prosecute murders and other homicides as hate crimes.

Kentucky lawmakers have a way to give racist killers a pat on the back, don't they? Is this anything like how some Republican in the state legislature refused to support a bill against school harassment because he considered harassment to be protected as religious freedom?

(Source: http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100719/NEWS01/7190347/1008/NEWS01/Judge+urges+Kentucky+to+consider+broadening+hate+crime+law)