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March 23, 2012

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White teen gets life sentence for hate-crime killing in US

A WHITE Mississippi teenager in the United States pleaded guilty on Wednesday to fatally running over a man with a truck because he was black, and received a life prison sentence for a crime the presiding judge said left "a great stain" on the southern state.

Deryl Dedmon, 19, received two concurrent life sentences for the racially motivated murder of 49-year-old James Craig Anderson, who died after being beaten and mowed down in a motel parking lot last year.

Dedmon's admission he killed Anderson because of his race doubled his penalty under the state's hate crime statute.

"I was young, I was dumb, I was ignorant," Dedmon said in court during a hearing in Jackson. "I was full of hatred."

Anderson, a Nissan auto worker, was returning to his car before dawn on June 26 when he was confronted by a group of white teenagers in a motel parking lot. The teens had been drinking at a birthday party and drove to Jackson specifically to harass African-Americans, said Hinds County Assistant District Attorney Scott Rogillio.

Anderson was physically attacked by the group before Dedmon deliberately ran over him with a Ford F-250 truck, Rogillio said. Anderson died at the scene. Dedmon yelled "white power" during the attack, Rogillio added.

"Your prejudice has brought a great stain on the state of Mississippi," Circuit Court Judge Jeff Weill Sr told Dedmon.

Mississippi has a long legacy of racial confrontation and was a focal point of Civil Rights activity in the 1960s and since. The racist Ku Klux Klan was prominent in the state for decades and remnants of the group remain.



 

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