January 1

In Washington, D.C., on this date in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the first of two executive orders, collectively known as the Emancipation Proclamation, outlawing slavery.

On this date in 1993 in Tampa, Florida, two white men, Charles Rourk, 32, and Mark Kohut, 26, both day laborers from Illinois and both living together in a trailer in Lakeland, Florida, abducted at gunpoint a black man, Christopher Wilson, a Jamaican-born New York stock brokerage clerk, near a Bloomingdale shopping plaza as he was buying a newspaper. Rourk and Kohut then took Mr. Wilson to a field near Fort Lonesome in southeast Hillsborough County Florida where he was doused with gasoline and set on fire. Rourk and Kohut laughed and shouted racial slurs at Mr. Wilson as they drove away. Mr. Wilson, who was on vacation from his home in Brooklyn, New York at the time of the attack on him, was burned over 40% of his body. Rourk, 27, and Kohut, 33, were each convicted by a six-person jury (five white, and one black; three men and three women) of attempted first-degree murder and robbery on September 7, 1993; Rourk was also convicted of armed kidnapping and Kohut was also convicted of kidnapping on the same date. No hate crime charges were ever lodged against the men. Mr. Wilson testified at the ten-day trial which took place in West Palm Beach, Florida, after a change in venue, and his testimony was a critical factor in the convictions. Rourk and Kohut were each sentenced to life in prison in October 1993 for attempted first-degree murder. Rourk also received 40 years in prison for armed kidnapping and robbery, and Kohut was given 27 years in prison for kidnapping and robbery; those sentences will follow their life sentences. Rourk and Kohut could have received three consecutive life sentences. The Florida Department of Corrections had Kohut and Rourk transferred to New Mexico to serve their sentences out of fear that black inmates in Florida might seek revenge against them. Both were eventually transferred back to Florida (Rourk in 2006). On May 10, 1995, a three-judge appellate court panel in West Palm Beach, Florida upheld the convictions and prison sentences of Mark Kohut, 28, and Charles Rourk, 35. Jeffery Ray Pellett, of Plant City, Florida, and who was 18 years old at the time of the attack on Mr. Wilson, pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact in the case. Pellett was sentenced to 22 months in state prison. Pellett, who testified against his two co-defendants, also pleaded guilty to a federal charge of aiding an armed carjacking and for that crime he was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in federal prison. He was initially released from federal custody in late 1998, and placed on five years probation. However, Jeffery Pellett was said to have violated the terms of his probation when he was arraigned on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm, improper exhibition of a dangerous weapon, and resisting an officer without violence in November 1999 by the Polk State Attorney's Office. The federal Bureau of Prisons has indicated that Pellett was released from prison most recently on July 3, 2001. In July, 2010, Kohut and Rourk went to court in Florida to seek a new trial.

On this date in 2009 in Joliet, Illinois, two white men—one with a previous hate crime criminal record—Jerry Bryant, 26, from Joilet, and Lucas M. Bailey, 26, from Wilmington, Illinois, allegedly attacked a 43-year-old black man because of his race outside the Marathon gas station at the corner of Larkin Street and McDonough Street yelling racial epithets at him as he was beaten. The victim was admitted to the Provena Saint Joseph Medical Center where he was treated for his injuries. Both suspects were charged with aggravated battery, mob action, committing a hate crime and resisting a police officer. Bryant was also charged with aggravated battery to a police officer; he was pepper-sprayed by a police officer after allegedly striking one of them. This was not the first time Bryant was charged with a hate crime: in February 2003, he was one of two people arrested by the Will County Sheriff's Department after a fight started outside a house owned by a black family in the Ridgewood area. At the time of the 2009 New Years Day hate crime attack, Bryant was on parole for a five-year sentence of theft for shoplifting from a New Lenox, Illinois, store in December 2006. In 2005, Bryant was sentenced to 39 months in prison after shoplifting numerous items from the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Morris, Illinois; and, he previously served time for robbery, aggravated battery and criminal damage to property.

In Buffalo, New York, outside the lesbian club, Roxy Bar, on Main Street in Buffalo's Allentown neighborhood on this date in 2010, Lindsay Harmon, 29, of Buffalo, was stabbed in her right eye (which partially blinded her), on her cheek, and on her arm allegedly by a woman who yelled anti-gay slurs at Ms. Harmon, who is a lesbian. Arrested was Suzanne Grover, 21, a former Buffalo resident who was living in Florida at the time of the attack on Ms. Harmon, an attack Buffalo police refused to classify as a hate crime. Grover was charged with second-degree assault; however, Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita did the right thing by seeking an indictment under New York State's Hate Crime Statute against Grover, but a Grand Jury later indicted Suzanne Grover of assault (but not as a hate crime). The attack on Ms. Harmon was the second anti-gay/lesbian assault on New Year's Day in 2010 in Buffalo, New York: a man thought to be gay had anti-gay slurs hurled at him before he was followed to a suburban mall parking lot where he was then beaten. The judge in the case issued a gag-order so that no further information about the attack, including the victim's identity, can be known.

On this date in 2012 in the nearly all-white community of Brooklyn Park, Maryland (Anne Arundel County), a 28-year old African-American man, Korrey Tubaya, had the home he was staying at purposefully set on fire; also, someone spray-painted the phrase "White Power" on the home's deck. In addition, racial and anti-gay slurs were found spray-painted on both sides of the torched house which was located in the 300 block of Church Street. About $150,000 in damage was done to the home which was destroyed by the arson; it took 30 firefighters about 20 minutes to put out the flames. This is the second time that Mr. Tubaya was targeted because of his race in Brooklyn Park. Mr. Tubaya—who lived in the basement of the house and who cared for the two elderly women who had lived upstairs—had his car vandalized on September 22, 2011. There were racial slurs scratched in the hood and trunk of his car, and the automobile was significantly damaged (the windshield was smashed, and the interior of the car and the tires were slashed). Law enforcement have called both incidents hate crimes. If you have any information about either of these hate crime, please call the Northern District police station at 410-222-6135, or call the Metro Crime Stoppers at 866-7-LOCKUP or the Anne Arundel County arson investigators. It is not uncommon for residents of nearly all-white communities to engage in bias-motivated crimes or to be charged with hate crimes, and as of the 2000 U.S. Census Brooklyn Park, Maryland was 92.15% White and only 4.21% Black or African-American. See our July 26 calendar date for another race-based hate crime attack in Brooklyn Park.

In 2012 in the early morning hours on this date while walking toward their car parked near Ortega Street and Chapala Street in Santa Barbara, California, two gay men were attacked because of their sexual orientation by three unknown white male assailants with shaved heads believed to be in their 20s. One of the victims suffered a broken jaw and a head injury, and the attack, which police labelled a hate crime, was videotape recorded from a mobile telephone as other bystanders intervened to help the victims. If you have any information about this hate crime, please call Detective Kushner at the Santa Barbara Police Department at (805) 897-2345.

On this date in 2012, in the borough of Queens, in New York City, an unemployed immigrant from Guyana, Ray Lazier Lengend, 40, allegedly firebombed a mosque full of worshipers (the Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center), a private home used as a Hindu temple on 170th Street (the Jagat Satya Sabha), a Yemeni immigrant-owned convenience store on 179th Street (the Hillside Deli), a home owned by an Indian family, and a Spanish bodega with Molotov cocktails. He also allegedly used Molotov cocktails to firebomb the home of his brother-in-law, Bejai Rai, 73, in Elmont, New York, on Long Island (Nassau County) on the same date. Ray Lengend, 40, of the Jamaica section of Queens, was arrested on January 3, 2012; he was tracked through a stolen late-model Buick with Virginia license plates that police said he stole from a rental lot at John F. Kennedy International Airport on December 30, 2011. The car was seen at two of the firebombing sites. The black defendant was arraigned out of the Queens Criminal Court on 18 criminal charges via teleconference from his hospital room at Bellevue Hospital Center—where he was sent following his arrest for psychiatric observation—including one count of arson as a hate crime, four counts of arson, and five counts of criminal possession of a weapon. The hate crime charge stemmed from anti-Muslim statements Lengend allegedly made after he was arrested. He apparently told police he "hated all the Muslims and Arabs because they were trying to take over his life. They have been doing it for 40 years;" and, he is alleged to have told police he wanted to harm "as many Muslims and Arabs as possible." He could get up to life in prison if convicted as charged. Ray L. Lengend was previously arrested nine times on a variety of charges, including drug possession and grand larceny; and, it is not uncommon for persons charged with hate crimes to have committed prior crimes or to go on to commit other crimes.