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In the seven years since its passage, 72 defendants have been charged and 45 convicted under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, according to the Justice Department.
But a 2015 report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data gathering and research organization at Syracuse University, said federal prosecutors also turned down 87 percent of hate crime referrals since 2009, the year the act was signed into law.
Insufficient evidence, lack of evidence of criminal intent, and weak or insufficient admissible evidence were the top three reasons for the rejections, the report said.
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