while serving on a jury recently I heard evidence about a homeless young man with alcohol problems who had twice been badly beaten in the few weeks before his death.

I read the following article earlier today in The New York Times

"Attacks on Homeless Bring Push on Hate Crime Laws"

WASHINGTON — With economic troubles pushing more people onto the streets in the last few years, law enforcement officials and researchers are seeing a surge in unprovoked attacks against the homeless, and a number of states are considering legislation to treat such assaults as hate crimes.

This October, Maryland will become the first state to expand its hate-crime law to add stiffer penalties for attacks on the homeless.

A report due out this weekend from the National Coalition for the Homeless documents a rise in violence over the last decade, with at least 880 unprovoked attacks against the homeless at the hands of nonhomeless people, including 244 fatalities

Sometimes, researchers say, one homeless person attacks another in turf battles or other disputes.
But more often, they say, the assailants are outsiders: men or in most cases teenage boys who punch, kick, shoot or set afire people living on the streets, frequently killing them, simply for the sport of it, their victims all but invisible to society.

Michael Stoops, the group's executive director, said social prejudices were "dehumanizing" the homeless and condoning hostile treatment. He pointed to a blurb titled "Hunt the Homeless" in the current issue of Maxim, a popular men's magazine. It spotlights a coming "hobo convention" in Iowa and says: "Kill one for fun. We're 87 percent sure it's legal."

The push has lacked any organized support by major civil rights groups. In Florida, which leads the country in assaults on homeless people, groups like the Anti-Defamation League have opposed recognizing those attacks as a hate crime. Opponents argue that homelessness, unlike race or ethnicity, is not a permanent condition and that such a broadening of the law would have the effect of diluting it.

"I hear the same rhetoric all the time," Ms. Johnson (Representative Democrat of Texas) said. "They ask, 'Why is their life more important than anyone else's?' "