Hate crime charge filed in assault case

Although very briefly reported in today's front page article, the hate crime charge filed against the four individuals who allegedly attacked two immigrants back in October is rather significant.

Here's a real brief recap of what happened:

City police arrested four suspects Tuesday morning for an alleged bias attack on two Mexican men last month that a witness videotaped on his iPhone.

Police said the four suspects, three of them brothers from Bethel and the fourth, a Danbury resident who cleans the city police station, shouted racial slurs as they beat and robbed the victims in a Balmforth Avenue parking lot in the early morning hours of Oct. 10.

Here's a copy of the charges filed (via the CT judicial website). The hate crime charge is highlighted in blue.



Here's a breakdown of the specific hate crime these guys are being charged with (CGS § 53a-181k).

SUMMARY

Connecticut has a number of statutes on hate crimes that protect a range of people, enhance penalties for bias crimes, and allow an injured person to sue for money damages. The primary criminal statutes are the intimidation based on bigotry or bias crimes. These statutes provide three degrees of penalties. They address certain actions that intimidate or harass another person because of his actual or perceived race, religion, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression.

[...]

Second-Degree

A person commits the second degree crime if he acts maliciously and intends to intimidate or harass someone because of his actual or perceived race, religion, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression by:

1. making physical contact with the victim;

2. damaging, destroying, or defacing property; or

3. threatening to do either of these things and the victim has reasonable cause to believe he will carry out the threat.

This is a class D felony, punishable by one to five years in prison, a fine of up to $ 5,000, or both (CGS § 53a-181k).