^ The way Butterscotch described it though, it's difficult to see how there would be evidence indicating a hate crime charge specifically. Especially a federal hate crime charge, where they have to show that one of a small number of federally protected benefits was interfered with, and that that was the intent of the crime--I can't imagine what the benefit(s) in question would be. And even with a state hate crime charge, as CTU2 fan pointed out, the mere "fact" that e.g. racial or homophobic epithets are uttered while committing the "primary" crime does not constitute grounds for hate crime charges (there was actually a Supreme Court case which resolved that; Wisconsin v. Mitchell, 1993). Now if the prosecution could show beyond a reasonable doubt that racism was the precipitating factor in committing the crime itself, that's different--but if you were a cop, wouldn't you find it a bit suspicious that a man who was present at the crime scene in order to repossess a car, as required by his job (not hard to prove), supposedly just happened to unprovokedly attack the car's owner purely out of racism while he was there?
Butterscotch is wrong about one thing though, it has nothing to do with whether the criminal "hates" the victim in general. What hate crime laws seek to punish is criminal conduct motivated by hatred of the victim insofar as s/he belongs to a protected class (e.g. ANY race, religion, nationality, gender or sexual orientation)...not hateful feelings or beliefs themselves, which are protected by the First Amendment. Because, such crimes are more likely to stir broad community unrest, provoke retaliatory acts, and intimidate other members of that protected class. That's why racism would have to be shown to be the precipitating factor.