Okay, I thought it went more like this :

killing by accident : punished for manslaughter
killed because of money : punished as murder with a motive
killed because of hate-crime : punished as murder with a motive

In other words, hate crime is just a motive and would recieve a punishment more or less that of any other motive depending on circumstance and severity. Any motivated murder is usually punished more harshly than manslaughter.

Because that would make perfect sense to me.

I haven't read through this whole thread, so I'm sorry if I'm just repeating stuff here, but I feel like the idea of "hate crimes" and whatnot are just perpetuating things like racism more than putting an end to them. I mean, it shouldn't matter if a violent crime was radically motivated,we should just try to be as even-handed with our discipline system as possible

The question is if you think criminals should be given a harsher sentence for committing a crime, like murder or assault, if their motive was the victims race, sexuality etc. Here's hate crime law in the United States:
Hate crime laws in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia