Relatives of the three Muslim college students killed in North Carolina are pressing for hate crime charges against the alleged shooter, but legal experts say such cases are relatively rare and can be difficult to prove.
Police in Chapel Hill say they have yet to uncover any evidence that Craig Stephen Hicks acted out of religious animus, though they are investigating the possibility. As a potential motive, they cited a longtime dispute over parking spaces at the condo community where Hicks and the victims lived.
Hicks, 46, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23; his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21; and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19.
The FBI is now conducting a “parallel preliminary inquiry” to determine whether any federal laws, including hate crime laws, were violated in the case.
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In 2012 when statistics were last available for such a tally, law enforcement agencies nationwide reported 5,796 “hate crime incidents.” It’s unclear how many yielded criminal convictions.
Meanwhile, experts said it would be highly unusual for federal authorities to step in if state officials have already won murder convictions with lengthy prison time.
“If the investigation does not uncover any obvious bias, then it would be very difficult for the federal government to bring a case as well,” said ex-federal prosecutor Kami Chavis Simmons, director of the criminal justice program Wake Forest University School of Law. “At either the state or federal level, proving a hate crime is a high burden.”
