In the State of Washington, so-called “hate crimes” are covered under the malicious harassment statutes. The term malicious harassment is meant to describe behavior that is more than just threatening. According to the statute, malicious harassment occurs when a person intentionally threatens a specific individual and places that individual in reasonable fear of harm because of the victim’s race, color, ancestry, national origin, gender,sexual orientation, or mental, physical, or sensory handicap.
The issue of what constitutes malicious harassment was addressed in a recent Washington Court of Appeals ruling, State v. Read (9/19/11, Division One). A man was found guilty of malicious harassment after confronting a parking attendant who issued him a parking ticket at the Elliott Bay Marina in Seattle. He appealed the verdict, saying that his actions did not amount to malicious harassment under the law.
In May of 2009, Charles Read and his wife drove to the restaurant to have dinner. Read parked his Ford F-150 Super Crew Cab pickup truck across at least two spaces in the parking lot. A parking attendant, Saba Zewdu, wrote a parking ticket for that infraction and placed it on the truck. When Read and his wife returned to the truck, he saw the ticket, became angry, and confronted the parking attendant.
It should be noted that Read is a six-foot tall, 240-pound Caucasian male, while Zewdu is an Ethiopian woman who is 5’2″ tall and weighs about half of what Read does. According to reports, Read drove his truck with tires screeching toward Zewdu. He rolled down the window and asked if she had given him the parking ticket. When she said yes, he hurled a racial epithet at her and said, “You gave me this [expletive] ticket.” Then he got out of his truck and advanced toward Zewbu, who observed that his fists were clenched, his eyes were red, and he was shaking with rage. As she backed away, he kept repeating his previous statements as well as calling her a “[expletive] Ethiopian” and asking, “Do you know who I am?” She tried to hold up her cell phone as if she were calling 911, but Read shouted “I don’t care about [expletive] cops – I know where you work.” Zewbu became frightened and eventually turned and ran away.
Read argued that even though he did use expletives and racial slurs and walk toward Zewbu, he did not issue a direct threat nor did he indicate that his anger was based on her ethnicity (but rather on the fact that she gave him a ticket). It is true that Read did not say anything to the effect of, “Because you are Ethiopian, I want to hurt you.”
But the court did not buy this reasoning, saying that the totality of his threatening statements coupled with the hurling of the racial epithets was enough to satisfy the conditions of malicious harassment. The appellate court upheld the conviction, and Read’s sentence of diversity training, anger management counseling, and 720 hours of community service was upheld.
At issue was the origin of the hostile or inappropriate actions. Read argued that the anger and motivation came from the ticket not from the persons racial background. State v. Read clarifies what constitutes the elements of the crime. The State must prove racial slurs or hate speech and threatening behavior during a given incident to constitute malicious harassment under the statute – even if an individual’s ethnicity was not shown to be the catalyst for the threatening confrontation.
It should also be noted that Reads First Amendment challenge failed.