Hate crimes - one of the stupid ideas of our day

This is a "politically correct" law. Aside from perhaps mercy killings or other unusual situations, are not all murders crimes of hate in some sense and to some degree? And why does hatred for a class of people as opposed to an individual make the crime any more heinous? It just makes no sense at all to make this an especially grievous crime. We just had a man who killed two people, and they are prosecuting it as a hate crime. Does that mean that they will execute him twice?