But other incidents require lengthy investigations to determine whether they meet the legal threshold for a hate crime.
A hate crime is often not treated as an offence on its own. Rather, it is added on as a motivating factor for a criminal offence like murder or assault, in order to impose stricter penalties on the accused.
Vermont, for instance, does not have a standalone criminal charge called a hate crime. Instead, it has what is known as a “hate crime enhancement”, which requires prosecutors to prove that the crime was motivated by bias.
If proven, the enhancement then prescribes longer sentences or requires judges to take the hate crime element into account when making their sentencing decisions.
Sarah George, the state’s attorney for Chittenden County, which encompasses Burlington, said in November that “although we do not yet have evidence to support a hate crime enhancement” in the shooting of the three Palestinian students, “there is no question this was a hateful act”.
George told reporters that sometimes, the evidence supporting a hate crime enhancement is clear “based on things that might have been said by the defendant or things that may have been immediately present in an apartment or online”.
But, she added, “we do need direct and great evidence to support that additional element”.
George’s office did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment on whether a hate crime enhancement would be filed in the students’ case. The office of the US Attorney for Vermont has also said it is investigating whether the attack violated federal laws.
Hate crimes are notoriously difficult to prove, too. Janice Iwama, an associate professor at American University and an expert on hate crimes, said authorities must prove not just that a person is biased or holds prejudices, but that “when they committed the crime, they committed that crime out of hate”.
“That is what really makes it hard,” she told Al Jazeera. “How do you prove that somebody was motivated based on their bias? That’s cognitive thinking that we just don’t have access to.”
Lia Ernst, the legal director at the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), also noted that the burden of proof is high for hate crimes – for good reason.
“If the bar were low, we would get into areas where a person was given additional penalties solely because they have beliefs that we find disgraceful or disgusting or untenable,” she told Al Jazeera.
In the case of the three Palestinian students, Ernst said that, without knowing what evidence police and prosecutors have uncovered, “it’s very hard to say” whether the threshold for filing a hate crime enhancement is met.
The accused shooter, who has pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted murder, was not reported to have said anything when he opened fire. His lawyer told local media in early March that prosecutors had not yet presented evidence to indicate they would be filing a hate crime enhancement.
Still, Ernst said that “the publicly available information appears to suggest that these young men may in fact have been intentionally targeted because of their identity as members of a protected class”.
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