What happened in Waikele? We know that two families came to blows after a parking lot collision, that a husband and wife were severely injured, and that a father and his minor son have been charged with assault. The son's case is in Family Court because of his youth. But what happened? Was it road rage or hate crime?

The investigation is not complete, and there are differing accounts of what happened, and in what sequence. The prosecutor has made at least a preliminary determination that this was not a hate crime. I agree.

If the facts have been reported accurately, this was not a hate crime under Hawai'i law.

A small but vocal faction has raised an outcry, demanding that the prosecutor amend the charge to a hate-crime designation, which would have the effect of doubling the maximum potential sentence (in this case, five years for second-degree assault). A lot of this outcry is, I think, based on a misinterpretation of what a hate crime is — or as Will Rogers said, on "things we know ... that ain't so." The resulting public debate has generated a lot of heat but not so much light.

As a professor of criminal law and procedure and civil rights at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa's William S. Richardson School of Law, I can shed a little light on this topic by explaining what is and what is not a hate crime under Hawai'i law.

First you must ask: "What are the facts?"

If reported accounts are accurate, the facts seem to be that a husband and wife in an SUV tried to pull into a parking stall in the Waikele Shopping Center near Baskin-Robbins, and in the process, hit or scraped the vehicle in the next stall. Sitting in the damaged vehicle was the minor, now charged in Family Court, who was waiting for his father to return from Baskin-Robbins. An affidavit filed with the court reported that the son was "enraged at the damage to his (father's) vehicle." The boy came out of his vehicle, allegedly started kicking the SUV's doors, and witnesses said the boy yelled "f------ haole" in the process.

While there are differing reports on the sequence and details of the events, the husband and wife got out of the SUV, the boy's father emerged from Baskin-Robbins, and in the free-for-all that followed, the SUV's owners suffered severe injuries, which triggered the assault charges.

So — why wouldn't the racial name-calling trigger a hate-crime charge? The answer is that the hate-crime law is all about motive, not just name-calling. To understand how the law applies, we have to look first at what it says.

A "hate crime," under Hawai'i law, is "any criminal act in which the perpetrator intentionally selected a victim, or in the case of a property crime, the property that was the object of a crime, because of hostility toward the actual or perceived race, religion, disability, ethnicity, national origin, gender identity or expression, or sexual orientation of any person."

In other words, a crime is not a hate crime unless the person doing the crime intentionally selects a victim, (or their property) "because of hostility toward the actual or perceived race," or other enumerated qualities. Name-calling, standing alone, doesn't transform an assault into a hate crime.

In the Waikele incident, no one was "selected." Based on the reported facts, the SUV's driver randomly chose a parking stall, and accidentally damaged the vehicle that happened to be in the next stall. Random. A boy who happened to be in the struck vehicle was enraged by the damage to his family's vehicle, and the tragedy exploded from there.

A hate crime is not about thinking (or speaking) ugly thoughts while committing a crime. It is about the motive for the crime, or in a sense, about using the crime itself to send a message or intimidate the targeted group, not just the targeted individuals. Pogroms, lynchings, the bombing of a Birmingham church, an attack on haole campers on the Big Island — all of these were hate crimes because the hate was the reason for the crime. It was not just expressed incidentally during the commission of a differently motivated crime.

It is not enough to speculate that "maybe" the parking lot incident would not have turned violent had the parties been of the same race. There are abundant examples of traffic incidents turning violent between people of the same racial (or other) background. To sustain a hate-crime charge under the law, the prosecution would have to show proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the SUV drivers' race was the reason for the rage.

Can anyone seriously suggest that father and son were on the lookout for people of another race to attack? Or that the attack was part of a racist effort to stop Caucasians from using Waikele Shopping Center? No — this encounter was random. Extreme, but random.

Hate crimes, like other crimes, do occur in Hawai'i, and the state Attorney General's Office keeps track of the numbers, the facts and the nature of the crimes. Sadly, all groups have been targeted at one time or another. Hawai'i is not paradise. Hawai'i is a real place, with real people, who sometimes commit real crimes. Real people who sometimes hate other people. Real people who occasionally commit hate crimes. That does not make every hateful crime a hate crime.

Yes, we have a race problem: the human race. Anywhere you find humans, you find bias and bigotry to a greater or lesser degree. Assault is a crime. Expressing bigotry through name-calling is hateful, and harmful, but standing alone, it does not turn a random act of violence into a hate crime.

"It ain't the things we don't know that hurt us, it's the things we know ... that ain't so." — Will Rogers

Hawai'i law based on motive: If reported facts are true, race did not trigger defendants' rage in parking lot incident — it was a random act of violence

Virginia E. Hench is a professor of criminal law and procedure at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai'i. She is the author of numerous legal articles and co-author of the book "Criminal Law, Cases and Materials." She wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.