On this date in 2000 in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, Ronald Taylor, 39, an African-American man, murdered three white men and seriously wounded two other white men, all solely because of their race. He also set fire to his residence at the Woodside Garden Apartments in Wilkinsburg. Racist and anti-Semitic, Taylor, who stole the gun used in the killings from his mother Shirley, wrote the following in a suicide note which was found in his apartment following his killing spree: “Jesus Christ made a very costly mistake putting white people on the face of the earth.” In other writings Taylor also praised Adolph Hitler and Timothy McVeigh, the domestic terrorist who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Over 120 people—including 37 children from a day care center—were evacuated when Taylor took refuge (and hostages) in an office building near the locations where most of the shootings took place. Killed by Ronald Taylor were: Joseph Healy, 71, a former Catholic priest and chaplain at Duquesne University, of Wilkinsburg; John Kroll, 55, a father of three and a carpenter and maintenance worker at the apartment building where Taylor lived, from Cabot, Pennsylvania; and Emil Sanielevici, 20, a junior physics major at the University of Pittsburgh who lived in Greenfield, Pennsylvania. Mr. Sanielevici—who was shot in the head at point-blank range as he sat in the drive-through lane at a McDonald’s restaurant and who had lived in Nova Scotia until moving to Pittsburgh in 1995—died the following day on March 2, 2000. Except for Mr. Kroll, who was killed at Taylor’s apartment building, the victims were attacked in either a McDonald’s or a Burger King restaurant in the Wilkinsburg business district. Injured by Taylor were: Steven Bostard, 25, an assistant manager at the attacked McDonald’s fast-food restaurant, of Swissvale, Pennsylvania; and, Richard Clinger, 56, a handyman living in Pittsburgh. On March 10, 2000, then-NAACP President and CEO, Kweisi Mfume, urged then-United States Attorney General Janet Reno, via letter, to prosecute Taylor to the fullest extent of federal law. However, federal prosecution was unnecessary, because on November 9, 2001, Ronald Taylor, 41—who had pleaded innocent by reason of insanity, who had a history of mental illness, and who was diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia—was convicted by a twelve-person jury in an Allegheny County courtroom of the following crimes: three counts of first-degree murder; eight counts of aggravated assault; four counts of simple assault; four counts of terroristic threats; three counts of unlawful restraint; 16 counts of reckless endangerment; one count of arson; one count of ethnic intimidation (a hate crime); one count of causing a catastrophe; one count of risking a catastrophe; and, one count of a firearms violation. On November 11, 2001, Taylor, 41, was sentenced to death.

A six-man, six-woman jury in the State Supreme Court in Manhattan (New York) convicted Steven Johnson, 39—a black man of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York, and father of a 10-year-old son—after four-and-a-half days of deliberation of attempted murder, assault and other charges, including some designated as hate crimes, on this date in 2007. This was Johnson's second trial; a November, 2004, jury was deadlocked. Attempted murder normally brings a sentence of up to 25 years in prison, but prosecutors said Johnson faces a potentially longer sentence, depending on his prior record, because attempted murder as a hate crime is considered a more serious offense than attempted murder. Indeed, on March 21, 2007, State Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley sentenced Steven Johnson to 240 years in prison. Johnson—an unemployed barber with AIDS whose wife died of AIDS in March 2002—has a criminal record for weapons and drug arrests dating back to 1985, and the jury found him guilty of shooting patrons at an East Village wine bar on Second Avenue in June, 2002, screaming, “White people are going to burn tonight.” Armed with three pistols, kerosene, and a samurai sword, Johnson shot and wounded three people and sprayed several patrons with kerosene, threatening to set them on fire at Bar Veloce. After his apprehension Johnson, apparently told police that he went to the East Village in search of people partying and that he wanted to kill as many white people as he could. After the attack on the bar patrons, police discovered a suicide note in Johnson's Humboldt Street apartment in which Johnson told his 10-year-old son to "lead a good life." Investigators also found pictures of guns and a note scrawled on the wall that read, "Tell the boys in blue I won't be easy." Johnson's criminal record includes a 1993 charge in North Carolina of carrying a concealed weapon, a 1995 charge in Brooklyn of illegal possession of a firearm, and 1999 Orange County, Florida, charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

In Ada, Oklahoma on this date in 2007 Sarah Kaspereit, 21, admitted she had filed a false police report after she told police she was attacked and that an assailant carved the word "lesbian" into her forearm, an allegation that drew national attention. The FBI, investigating the allegation as a hate crime, suspected what turned out to be the truth: Kaspereit had inflicted the injury to herself. Ada Police Chief Mike Miller said he did not intend to file any criminal charges against Kaspereit even though filing a false police report is a criminal offense.

On this date in 2008 in Oviedo, Florida, Andrew Matthews, 15, of Oviedo, was arrested and charged with simple assault with the intentional threat to do violence and trespassing, for his alleged role in hanging a noose from a tree in the front yard of Doreen and Rupert Nelson, an African-American couple, who live along Lake Rogers Circle in the Lake Rogers Estate subdivision of Oviedo. Matthews' trespassing charge was raised to a felony as police added a hate crime enhancement to the charge. However, on May 5, 2008, the hate crime enhancement was dropped against Matthews by the District Attorney’s office, although the charge of misdemeanor trespassing remained open.

In Fridley, Minnesota, (Anoka County) on this date in 2008, Troy Brazelton, 39, was allegedly beaten into a coma that lasted several weeks by Thomas Scott Cretilli, Jr., 25, of Mounds View, who was charged with assault and who faces possible federal hate crime charges because of the incident. Mr. Brazelton, who is black, was playing pool at the Two Stooges Bar and Grill, located at 71718 University Avenue NE, when a group of white men began yelling racial slurs at him. People at the establishment complained and the white men were ejected from the bar. However, when Mr. Brazelton later went outside to smoke a cigarette, he is said to have been attacked in the parking lot by Cretilli.

Shortly after midnight at a house on Dogwood Road in San Carlos Park, Florida on this date in 2008, a black man, Bronwyn L. McCant, 21 (DOB: October 20, 1986), of Lehigh Acres, Florida, was in a car where a racist slur was hurled at Jaime Gonzalez, 21, a Hispanic electrician living in San Carlos Park; seconds later, McCant shot to death Mr. Gonzalez, 21, who was changing a flat tire with his cousin. McCant also allegedly fled the scene and the car he was in refused to stop for law enforcement, and at one point the car headed directly at a sheriff deputy’s vehicle, forcing the deputy to swerve to avoid being struck. Despite the fact that a racial slur was heard immediately before the fatal unproked shooting of Mr. Gonzalez, who at the time of his slaying was engaged to be married, and despite the fact that Tony Schall, a spokesman with the Lee County Sheriff's Department, said, "It doesn't appear that the victim did anything to provoke this. It just appears to be something done at the spur of the moment," McCant was not charged with a hate crime. Instead, Bronwyn McCant was charged with second-degree murder, aggravated fleeing and eluding a law officer, and aggravated assault on a law officer. On February 4, 2009, McCant pleaded guilty to manslaughter with a firearm in lieu of continuing his murder trial. At last check McCant was serving his prison sentence at the Madison Correctional Institution, and his scheduled release date is February 7, 2023, at which time he will be 36 years old.

In Aiken County, South Carolina on this date in 2009, vandals attacked a predominently African-American church, the Family Life Worship Center, spray-painting part of the building, including the letters KKK.

In Galveston, Texas on this date in 2009, two white patrons inside a gay bar called Robert’s Lafitte on Avenue Q were attacked by rock-throwing hate-crime perpetrators. Former Navy submariner, Marc Bosaw, 57, required a dozen staples to close the head laceration he suffered, and he has suffered long-term effects from his head injury. In addition, James Troy Nickelson (at times spelled in the media Nickelsen), 39, was hit in the jaw. Arrested were three African-American men, brothers Lawrence Henry Lewis III, 20, and Lawrneil Henry Lewis, 18, and their cousin, Alejandro Sam Gray, 17. The three arrested were charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon with hate crime enhancements each. As part of a plea bargain agreement, in January, 2010, Lawrence Henry Lewis III, 21, pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon with a hate crime enhancement for which he received the minimum sentence possible: five years in prison. On March 26, 2010, Alejandro Gray, 18, pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon with an enhancement for a hate crime, and Galveston’s 212th District Court Judge Susan Criss sentenced Gray to 20 years for each crime (and Gray's sentences were to run concurrently). Gray could have been sentenced to life in prison. However, on June 8, 2010, Judge Criss granted Alejandro S. Gray a new trial stating there was evidence that Gray's dyslexia was not presented before his plea hearing thus raising the question of miscommunication with the plea bargain offer and its acceptance. It was reported that Alejandro Gray could read the plea bargain document, but he could not properly pronounce some of the words in it, and apparently that was sufficient for the judge to toss out Gray's conviction. Lawrneil Lewis's trial began in July, 2010, and his brother Lawrence testified against him on July 20, 2010, stating that all three men threw chunks of concrete at their victims. Lawrneil Lewis could have received a prison sentence from five years to life. Instead, on July 21, 2010, Lawrneil was acquitted by a jury after he testified that he did not commit a crime. Then on July 30, 2010, Alejandro Sam Gray, 19, again pleaded guilty to a hate crime. Specifically, he accepted a plea bargain of five years in prison by pleading guilty to one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon with a hate crime enhancement in exchange for the other charge against him being dropped. Judge Carolyn Johnson accepted the plea deal. The prosecutor in the case, Jon Hall, said of Alejandro S. Gray after the plea deal was accepted, "He pled guilty and pled true to the hate-crime enhancement that made the punishment range five to 99 years or life. The defendant chose the victim because of the defendant’s bias or prejudice against a group based on sexual preference." Thus, Alejandro Gray, who is eligible for parole after serving half of his five-year prison term, received the minimum possible sentence.

In Washington, DC, on this date in 2011, a black man, Antwan Holcomb, 21, was found guilty of robbing a black gay man, Anthony Perkins, 29, of a pack of cigarettes and then fatally shooting him in the head in his car on December 26, 2009 after Holcomb met his victim on a gay chat telephone line with the intent purpose of robbing him. Specifically, Holcomb, who was arrested in March 2010, was convicted of first-degree murder, armed robbery, unlawful possession of a firearm, and carrying a pistol without a license. Despite the fact that Antwan Holcomb selected his victim based on Mr. Perkins' sexual orientation (a police affidavit states: "He stated that he posed as a homosexual in an attempt to lure a victim to his location for the purpose of robbing him"), despite the fact that Holcomb told investigators, "I'm not of that nature. I'm a cold-blooded man. I don't like fags. I never will," and despite the fact that Holcomb told someone after the slaying that he "shot the faggy in the head and robbed him of a pack of Newport cigarettes," a grand jury failed to bring forth any hate crime charges against Holcomb who was scheduled for sentencing on May 5, 2011. Two weeks prior to Mr. Perkins' murder, Antwan Holcomb was arrested on December 12, 2009, and was charged with shooting two men outside the Player's Lounge, a popular Southeast DC gay-friendly nightclub, a shooting in which one of the victims was rendered paralyzed from the waist down.