Kim C said:

I think someone beating another person with a baseball bat IS a hate crime regardless of what epithets were or weren't used.

Kim, I certainly see what you're saying in a human context, but in the context of the law a "hate crime" is a sort of term of art, with sociopolitical meaning.

If I beat up my ex-son-in-law (as in my mind I've often threatened to do), my crime isn't a "hate crime" as that expression is understood in the law. Reprehensible, surely, but not fitting into that legal category.

Burning a cross on the lawn of an African-American, on the other hand, is a hate crime even though no epithets are used.

Dave Oesterreich