It’s rare for Italian lawmakers from across the political spectrum to agree on anything. But on Tuesday, the lower house of Parliament unanimously ratified a law introducing the crime of femicide into Italy’s criminal code, punishable by life in prison.
(title from entry in NYT’s The Morning newsletter)
Laws are different during wartime against an invading army. If it’s a random Russian who’s been living in Ukraine lawfully for the last thirty years, then yeah, it is an ethnically motivated crime and should be punished differently.
The reason that hate crimes are handled differently is because a person who commits one is more likely as a whole to commit more hate crimes than one who kills an individual for individual reasons (though sometimes it’s just a crime of opportunity, which happens to involve a targeted group, in which case it should be determined in court not to be a hate crime).