As a Boise Criminal Attorney I often get calls from individuals asking about hate crimes in Idaho. Idaho Code 18-7902 defines a hate crime as the malicious or with specific intent to intimidate someone because of their race, color, religion, national ancestry, or national origin to cause physical injury, damage, destroy or deface the property of another, threaten harm by act or word a person who fits within the above definition.
As a Boise Criminal Attorney I often hear from people that that definition does not cover all the people who are subject to hate crime, specifically gay people. If you are gay in Idaho and you have been subject to malicious harm or intimidation does the law protect you? Lawyers and attorneys will tell you it does, but it does in a different way than this code section provides. Boise lawyers and attorneys would tell you that you are protected under general Idaho law. For example, if you were the subject of malicious harassment and you were physically harmed the prosecuting attorney, the lawyer for the state, would charge the defendant with assault and battery. If your property was damaged intentionally and maliciously, the prosecuting attorney, the lawyer for the state, would prosecute the defendant on a property crime such as trespass, vandalism, arson, burglary etc.
No one should ever be belittled, demeaned, intimidated, ridiculed or physically or mentally harmed for any reason including their sexual orientation. Idaho law needs to enter the 21st century and include sexual orientation in the definition of hate crimes.
If you need to speak to a lawyer or attorney about crime in Idaho or the specific crimes of assault and battery, theft, larceny, burglary, possession, drugs or any other crime please contact our law firm at (208) 472-2383
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