With a little more than a month remaining in the 2017 Indiana General Assembly session, advocates are ramping up their efforts to get hate crime legislation through the Statehouse this year.
The only hate crime bill that was sent to the Senate floor for a vote was pulled by the author yesterday after a proposed amendment from a Republican senator split support for the measure and led to the conclusion that reaching a consensus would be too difficult.
Legislation targeting hate crimes is advancing in Indiana, one of five states without such a law.
Once again, a handful of Indiana lawmakers and community organizations are trying to get hate-crime legislation through the Statehouse and onto the governor’s desk.
Family members of the nine people Dylann Roof killed in a Charleston, South Carolina, church weren’t the only ones who suffered. Their church family grieved, too.
Dylann Roof said he wasn't sure “what good it would do” to ask jurors for life in prison instead of execution, showing no remorse for killing nine black church members during a Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina.
Dylann Roof hesitated for about 20 seconds when an FBI agent asked him what he was doing on the night nine black church members were killed during Bible study in a historic congregation in Charleston, South Carolina.
The FBI says the number of hate crimes reported to police increased by about 6.7 percent last year, led largely by a 67 percent surge in crimes against Muslims.
A state senator from Indianapolis announced Tuesday his intention to again file legislation to enact a hate crime statute in Indiana, one of only five states that does not have this kind of law on the books.
Dylann Roof's defense team is challenging the constitutionality of the federal hate crimes law, a legal longshot they say they'll drop if prosecutors agree not to pursue the death penalty in the killings of nine people inside a South Carolina church.
More than half of Indiana's police agencies failed to file hate crime reports with the FBI between 2009 and 2014, a trend advocates say is troubling and one reason why state lawmakers need to change the state's standing as one of five states without a hate crime law.
Federal authorities are investigating an act of vandalism at the headquarters of the Islamic Society of North America near Indianapolis as a possible hate crime.
Despite a grassroots effort and several bills addressing the issue, hate crime legislation appears to have failed in the Indiana Statehouse.
A recent hatchet attack near Bloomington against a high school exchange student from China is being investigated by the FBI as a possible hate crime.
Legislation creating the state’s first hate-crime law to help victims targeted because of their race, sexual identity, religion or other specified characteristic is expected to die because it won’t get a committee hearing in the House, leaving lawmakers few options to address civil rights this year.
A bias-motivated crimes bill authored by a northern Indiana legislator was approved by a Senate committee Tuesday, the only one of six such bills to have received a hearing so far this legislative session.
Indiana is one of five states without a hate crime law on the books.
A coalition of religious and civic organizations has already started pushing the Indiana General Assembly to pass hate crime legislation that includes language covering sexual orientation and gender identity.