In Stamford, Connecticut on this date in 2007, 17-year-old Stamford High School senior, Candice Owens, who is African-American, received threatening and racist voicemail messages allegedly from a group of teens sitting in a car, including one message that included the violent threat of "putting a bullet in your head like Martin Luther King."  Ms. Owens was subsequently tutored from her home for weeks too afraid to return to school.  An arrest warrant for one of the callers, Evan Kopek, a 17-year-old former classmate of Ms. Owens, was issued and according to David Cohen, a state's attorney for the Stamford-Norwalk Judicial District, Kopek will be charged with first-degree harassment and second-degree intimidation by bigotry or bias.  Among the group of teens in the car at the time the calls were said to have sent to Ms. Owens was the 14-year-old son of Stamford Mayor Daniel Malloy.  The FBI assisted with the investigation by attempting to use voice-recognition technology to help identify the voices on the voicemail messages.

On this date in 2008 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, nearly 500 headstones were found toppled in what law enforcement had initially called a hate crime. The incident occurred at the Poile Zedek Cemetery, which is the cemetery of the Orthodox Ashkenazic synagogue of the same name. Four teenagers were arrested and charged with destroying or toppling about 600 gravestones at the cemetery, but they were not charged with a hate crime as police determined the perpetrators did not know they were in a Jewish cemetery. The four teens, ages 15-17, pled guilty to conspiracy, desecration of venerated objects, and criminal mischief charges in the family division of Middlesex County Superior Court. The four face up to one year of imprisonment for each count of conspiracy and desecration of venerated objects and a maximum of two years imprisonment for each count of criminal mischief.

On the campus of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst on this date in 2008, a black biology student, Jason Vassell, 23, had racial slurs hurled at him while in his dormatory with friends by two intoxicated white men who are said to be white supremacist members of a group called the East Milton Mafia, John Bowes, 20, and Jonathan Bosse, 19. The two men, who first stood outside Mr. Vassell's dorm room window before breaking it and then challenging Mr. Vassell to fight, were apparently only on campus to get drunk. When Mr. Vassell refused to fight Bowes and Bosse, the two men are then said to have entered the Mackimmie residence hall, and to have continued yelling racial slurs at Mr. Vassell. Bosse, of Milton, Massachusetts, is then said to have assaulted Mr. Vassell breaking his nose, and Mr. Vassell is said then to have stabbed both drunken intruders with a pocketknife; neither Bowes nor Bosse were seriously hurt. Mr. Vassell was then arrested and charged with two counts of armed assault with intent to murder and two counts of aggravated assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. It was not until February 8, 2008 that Bosse was charged with a hate crime, disorderly conduct, and assault and battery. Bowes, of Hancock, New Hampshire, was never charged. In the Motion to Dismss, Mr. Vassell's attorneys assert: "By declining to prosecute one of these men, and bringing inappropriately reduced charges against the other, the District Attorney has engaged in selective prosecution based on the basis of race." UMASS-Amherst faculty and students protested the actions of the police (who labelled Mr. Vassell a "donkey", a "drug dealer", and an "asshole" within hours of the attack on him) and the District Attorney (who undercharged one of the alleged perpetrators and filed no charges against the other one), and a website has been set up for Jason Vassell's defense.

On this date in 2010 in a Monterey, California courtroom, Nathan Augustine, 28, of Pacific Grove, California, pleaded guilty to firebombing the Creative Visions tattoo parlor in Monterey and the Lattitudes Restaurant in Pacific Grove with Molotov cocktails labelled with swastikas in July, 2009. Augustine, who faces up to seven years in prison, targeted the tattoo parlor because employees there refused to give him a tattoo of a swastika and of President Barack Obama overlaid with crosshairs. Augustine, who is to be sentenced March 12, 2010, targeted the restaurant because a black assistant manager had turned him down for a job.

On this date in 2012 in a federal courtroom in Kansas City, Missouri, a white woman, Teresa Witthar, 43, of Independence, Missouri, pled guilty to one count of conspiracy, one count of violating the Fair Housing Act, and one count of obstruction of justice for entering (with two white men) a bi-racial man’s mobile home on or about June 6, 2006, and then scrawling over a dozen racial slurs on the inside walls of the home of the victim, Nathaniel Reed, at the Highland Manor Mobile Home Park in Independence. Two days later Witthar is said to have driven her two co-conspirators, Charles Wilhelm and David Martin, back to Mr. Reed's home and to have waited while Wilhelm and Martin set it on fire. In addition, Witthar unsuccessfully tried to persuade another person to provide false testimony to a grand jury in the spring of 2011 about her role in the hate crime vandalism and arson. Witthar was indicted by a federal grand jury in August 2011 on one count of conspiracy, one count of violating the Fair Housing Act, one count of using fire to commit a felony, two counts of obstruction of justice, and two counts of making false statements for her role in the vandalism and torchin