AllMovie

A quiet community reveals an ugly underside in the wake of a horrible crime in this independent drama. Robbie Levinson (Seth Peterson) and Trey McCoy (Brian J. Smith) are a gay couple who've been together for six years; they've been sharing a comfortable home in suburban Dallas most of that time, and are planning to get married once the legalities work themselves. Robbie and Trey are good neighbors who get along well with the other folks in the community until Chris Boyd (Chad Donella) moves in next door. Chris is a youth pastor at a church run by his father (Bruce Davison), a fundamentalist Christian who preaches often and with great vehemence about the evils of homosexuality. Chris doesn't keep his feelings about gays to himself, and when Trey is found dead in a nearby park, the victim of a sadistic beating with a baseball bat, Robbie believes Chris may be involved. However, Chris' father and mother provide an alibi for him, and the police hand the case from Detective Fisher (Farah White), who investigates hate crimes, to Sgt. Esposito (Giancarlo Esposito) in the homicide department. Robbie is appalled to discover he's now the leading suspect in the murder, and begins making his own investigation into Trey's death. Hate Crime was the first feature film from writer and director Tommy Stovall.