Two Oklahoma Men Indicted for Brutal Hate Crime, the Latest in a Spree of Similar Indictments and Convictions

     In the early morning hours of June 22nd, 2019, Jarric Carolina, a black man, was brutally attacked outside a tavern in Shawnee, Oklahoma, by Brandon Killian and Devan Johnson, being knocked unconscious by the two while they shouted, "You're dead, n****r." The entire incident was captured on a security camera. In October 2019, Johnson pleaded guilty to felony charges in exchange for a sentence of five years in prison, but apparently that didn't change him. After his arrest, he threatened to "kill all the black people" in the saloon; at a court date, he shouted to victim's girlfriend, "Go to your black boyfriend now!" Now, both men, lifelong felons, have been charged with hate crimes carrying a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison with three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine. If they hadn't been indicted on federal charges, Johnson might have been getting out of prison in a matter of months, so the community is much safer with the filing of these charges.

     2022 has started off with a bang in the fight against hate crimes across the United States in no small part thanks to the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, which, aside from increasing enforcement of hate crime laws to combat AAPI hate, also made numerous major changes to how America tracks, reports, and prosecutes all hate crimes. The Department of Justice has made prosecuting hate crimes a top priority: the case in Oklahoma was far from the only one.

     On February 22nd, 2022, the three white men who lynched Ahmaud Arbery were convicted on federal hate crimes charges after just a few hours of jury deliberation: all will face a likely sentence of life in prison. On February 23rd, 2022, Christopher Brenner Brook, 20, of Columbus, Ohio; Jonathan Allen Frost, 24, of West Lafayette, Indiana and of Katy, Texas; and Jackson Matthew Sawall, 22, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin; pled guilty to conspiring to provide material support to terrorism for their early 2020 plot to attack America's energy grid with the goal of starting a race war, a despicable plot that saw them train with weapons and disseminate neo-Nazi material. All face a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

     The same day, a Texas man named Jose Gomez III pleaded guilty to a hate crime for a horrific attack in which he stabbed an Asian man, the man's six-year-old child, and an employee who tried to intervene while also trying to attack the man's wife and two-year-old child in March 2020 because he believed them to be Chinese and responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. He faces a maximum of three consecutive life sentences and $750,000 in fines on the three counts. He was only 19 when the horrific crime occurred, but that doesn't make a difference: he's not going to become any less hateful. Hate crimes are always especially tragic, but it's hard to get sadder than a child experiencing that level of hateful violence so early in life, that a six-year-old and a two-year-old have already had their lives ruined because of their race. Mr. Gomez deserves no leniency and no second chances.

     On February 10th, 2022, Paola, Kansas, resident Colton Donner pleaded guilty to a hate crime for a September 2019 attack in which he got out of his car and began shouting racial slurs at a black man, telling him it was a "white town" and threatening the victim with a knife. He faces up to 10 years in prison. 

     It's not just crimes based on race. In 2019, Alan Douglas Fox burned down four churches in his home city of Nashville (one Catholic, one Methodist, and two Baptist): on February 16th, 2022, the 29-year-old was sentenced to seven years in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release. On January 11th, 2022, 25-year-old Kaleb Cole, a leader of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen, was convicted of five federal felony counts and sentenced to seven years in prison by a jury for organizing a campaign to intimidate activists and reporters working to highlight anti-Semitism. His co-conspirator Cameron Shea was convicted and sentenced last April, while two others were convicted and sentenced in 2020.

     Sometimes it's about race and religion: on February 10th, 2022, 45-year-old Dushko Vulchev of Houlton, Maine, was indicted on five felony arson counts carrying a maximum penalty of 90 years in federal prison for repeatedly setting fire to a black church and surrounding vehicles and property in the town in December 2020. A search of his car and home revealed neo-Nazi material, including a "White Lives Matter" mural, a glorified picture of Hitler, and a message in which he advocated for killing all black people. 

     Virtually every minute of every hour of every day of every year, a hate crime based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and identity, nationality, and other characteristics are committed. These are just a few of the more high-profile cases the DOJ has prosecuted in the first two months of 2022, while the cases the DOJ prosecutes are a tiny fraction of those prosecuted by states. It's time for Arkansas, South Carolina, and Wyoming, the last states without hate crime laws, to implement them, and it's time for Congress to pass the Emmett Till Antilynching Act.