Portrait Of A Hate Criminal

Keith Phoenix, the man pictured right, was, according to the SPLC`s Hatewatch, a “Man Guilty of Murder as Hate Crime.”

They say

“A 30-year-old man accused of beating an Ecuadorean immigrant to death on a Brooklyn street was convicted on Monday of murder as a hate crime.”

The headline in the New York Times says Man Guilty of Murder as Hate Crime, [June 28, 2010]

Their Keith Phoenix page, from which I got this picture, describes him as a “Bronx resident.”

Prosecutors said that Mr. Phoenix and an accomplice, Hakim Scott, attacked Mr. Sucuzhañay (pronounced suh-KOO-shen-y’eye) and his brother in December 2008 because they were Hispanic and because the suspects believed the brothers were gay.

While there is a link to Mr. Phoenix’s photograph in the web version of the NYT, the story doesn’t even hint that he`s black. His accomplice, Hakim Scott, is also black, and has been convicted of first-degree manslaughter, but not of a hate crime.

The difference is apparently that Scott could get 40 years, and Phoenix could get life.