But there have been instances where a crime was committed that obviously wasn't hate-related, but hate crime legislation was applied to them solely because of the races of the parties involved. I'm not saying that any violent act is okay, but it does bother me that if I killed a black man that I could potentially be more severely punished than if a black man killed a black man.

If the courts wanted to take the brutality of the acts into question (dragging a person behind a truck versus shooting him, for example), that would be okay by me. They may already, for all I know (is that what aggravated means?).