Clairrise said:

Unless the defendant can show that it was intended inoffensively, it must be assumed he was using it abusively. After all, you never hear of someone punching someone in the mouth, whilst saying "you no good red-head", or "you *** person with grey-blue eyes", do you?

That means guilty until proven innocent?

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I think the previous poster is considering that when a word with so strong a negative connotation there arises a presumption that it was used pejoratively. A presumption like that can, of course, be rebutted and perhaps refuted in a particular case.

As I mentioned earlier, even assuming that "nigger" was used pejoratively doesn't necessarily in itself make the baseball bat assault a hate crime.

Dave Oesterreich