Judge Knocks Down Charges In Jackson Homicide

 

 

Bond For John Aaron Rice Set At $5,000

2011/07/19 – One of two teenagers accused in what police described as a hate crime is out of jail after a Monday hearing.

A judge knocked down a murder charge against John Aaron Rice to aggravated assault.

District Attorney Robert Smith said he won’t back down on the murder charge despite the ruling.

“We’re not disappointed at all because we are presenting our same facts to the grand jury, with the same charges,” Smith said.

Rice is accused in the death of James Craig Anderson, which Smith described as a “hate crime murder.”

In the ruling, Judge William Barnett said Rice would be “bound over as a charge of simple assault (and) bond is set at $5,000.”

“We feel confident that everything that the Police Department has done and everything that we have presented in the past is very good evidence. We’re very confident in that,” Smith said.

Prosecutors said their primary evidence is from witness statements collected by Jackson Police Department Detective Eric Smith.

The detective said witnesses overheard another teenager accused in the case — Daryl Dedmon — at a party in Rankin County, where he said he was going to Jackson to get revenge for an alleged robbery.

Rice’s attorney, Sam Martin, pointedly asked Smith if there was any evidence to show that Dedmon or Rice actually spoke. The detective said there wasn’t any besides the witness testimony.

Rice told police he saw Anderson locked out of his SUV at the Metro Inn on Ellis Avenue and that Dedmon quickly showed up before an argument between the trio started.

The detective said that according to witnesses, Rice punched Anderson first, and when Anderson fell to the ground, Dedmon joined in and began kicking him.

Smith said Rice jumped into a Jeep after the fight and drove off. After that, the officer said witnesses told him Dedmon jumped a curve and struck Anderson.

During testimony, Rice claimed William Montomory was driving the Jeep he was in, and that Dedmon called him after striking Anderson and said, “I ran that [racial epithet] over.”

The detective said Rice was present during the fight and that racial slurs were used during Anderson’s beating.

Through their attorney, Anderson’s family said they are disappointed in the judge’s decision.

 

(source: Clarion Ledger)

 

Video shows white teens driving over, killing black man, says DA

 

2011/12/08-On a recent Sunday morning just before dawn, two carloads of white teenagers drove to Jackson, Mississippi, on what the county district attorney says was a mission of hate: to find and hurt a black person.

In a parking lot on the western side of town they found their victim.

James Craig Anderson, a 49-year-old auto plant worker, was standing in a parking lot, near his car. The teens allegedly beat Anderson repeatedly, yelled racial epithets, including “White Power!” according to witnesses.

Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith says a group of the teens then climbed into their large Ford F250 green pickup truck, floored the gas, and drove the truck right over Anderson, killing him instantly.

Mississippi officials say it was a racially motivated murder. What the gang of teens did not know was that a surveillance camera was focused on the parking lot that night, and many of the events, including the actual murder of Anderson, were captured live on videotape.

CNN has exclusively obtained that surveillance tape. The group of teens that night was led by 18-year-old Deryl Dedmon, Jr., of Brandon, Mississippi, according to police and officials.

“This was a crime of hate. Dedmon murdered this man because he was black,” said Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith. “The evidence will show that.”

Asked if there could be any doubt whether the intent was to actually hurt and kill a black person, Smith responded: “No doubt about it. They were going out to look for a black victim to assault, and in this case, even kill.”

Dedmon led and instigated the attack from early in the evening, he took part in the beating of Anderson, and Dedmon was also the actual driver of the Ford 250 truck that would serve as the murder weapon, according to officials.

As the teens were partying and drinking miles away from Jackson that night, in largely white Rankin County, Dedmon told friends they should leave, saying “let’s go fuck with some niggers,” according to law enforcement officials.

Then, the gang of teens climbed into Dedmon’s green truck and a white SUV Cherokee, and drove 16 miles down Interstate 20, to the western edge of Jackson, a predominantly black area.

The teens would have seen Anderson immediately as they exited the highway, as the parking lot where he was standing is just beside the exit ramp.

“This is the first business that you get to coming off the highway and so that was the first person that was out here and vulnerable,” said district attorney Smith.

On the videotape, obtained and reviewed by CNN, the group of teens is seen pulling into the parking lot, and stopping where Anderson is standing, though he is just off camera and not visible.

The teens can then be seen going back and forth between their cars and Anderson. Witnesses told law enforcement officials this is when the repeated beatings of Anderson took place.

Dedmon pummeled Anderson repeatedly as he crumpled to the street, according to officials, though this is not visible in the videotape. Finally, after the beating some of the teens left and some got into the green truck.

At this moment on the video, Anderson becomes visible, as he staggered into view and walked towards the headlights of the truck. The truck suddenly surges ahead, running over Anderson, then continuing at high speed away from the scene.

Shortly after he allegedly drove the truck over Anderson, Dedmon allegedly boasted and laughed about the killing, according to testimony given by some of the teens to detectives.

“I ran that nigger over,” Dedmon allegedly said in a phone conversation to the teens in the other car.

He repeated the racial language in subsequent conversations, according to the law enforcement officials.

“He was not remorseful he was laughing, laughing about the killing,” said district attorney Smith.

Later that morning, James Craig Anderson’s family learned their 49-year-old brother and son died in a hit and run. Only later, when witness statements were taken did they learn the real horror.

“It appears there is no doubt that this was a racially motivated killing,” said Winston Thompson, the attorney representing Anderson’s family. “The family is still in shock still in disbelief.”

Smith and officials in the Hinds County District Attorney’s office say they plan to indict Dedmon for murder and a hate crime.

Deryl Dedmon is thin, weighing a mere 130 pounds, and short — at 5 feet; he has straggly blond hair and piercing blue eyes.

The teen, just 18 years old, has been charged with murder and now faces a possible double life sentence. Calls to Deryl Dedmon’s attorney have gone unanswered.

During a bond hearing his attorney told the court he saw nothing to back up the “racial allegations.”

At Dedmon’s home, a girl who answered the door pretended not to know him though the pick-up truck he allegedly used as a murder weapon sticks out of the family’s garage.

Police say they returned it after the vehicle was processed. A second teen, 18-year-old John Aaron Rice, has been charged with simple assault, for his part in the beating his attorney also did not return calls.

Neither teen has entered a plea.

The other teens in the group have not been charged.

And James Craig Anderson’s family has decided to remain silent for now, trying to come to grips with a crime they thought was in Mississippi’s past: the murder of a man just because he was black.

 

(source: CNN)

 

Weighing Race and Hate in a Mississippi Killing

2011/08/22-No one disputes that James Craig Anderson, a middle-aged black family man with a quick wit and a demanding sense of style, was robbed, beaten and then run over by a group of white teenagers in a motel parking lot early one morning in June.

But as the case builds — charges against the young man accused of driving the Ford pickup that hit Mr. Anderson were raised to capital murder on Friday, and the F.B.I. is now involved — significant questions remain.

Was the killing of Mr. Anderson premeditated racial violence? An act indicative of a deep cultural divide?

Or was the behavior of Deryl Dedmon, the slight, blond teenager who could be facing the death penalty, simply an anomaly born of anger, alcohol and teenage stupidity, as some close to the case suggest?

Beyond those questions, many here are asking whether Mr. Anderson’s death will prompt a deeper discussion of race relations in a state that has struggled mightily to move beyond its past.

“Racism has always been part of the lifestyle in Mississippi in one form or another,” said Dr. Timothy Summers, 68, a Jackson psychiatrist whose father opened a black-owned savings and loan in Mississippi in the 1950s.

“There still is that component of our culture that very much likes to hold on to how things have been in the past,” he said. “That group, however, doesn’t represent the broader cross section of people who are good and honest but perhaps too naïve, perhaps too quiet, too complacent in looking at racism.”

Although they lived just 15 miles apart and spent Sundays in church, Mr. Anderson, 48, and Mr. Dedmon, 19, could not have led more different lives.

Mr. Dedmon liked his high school agriculture classes, but not as much as he loved hanging out with friends at a drive-in restaurant in the largely white suburban county where he lived, his friends say. He was the joker among a group for whom country music, Bible verses, Bud Light and pickup trucks serve as the cultural markers.

Mr. Anderson was a good country cook, a gifted gardener and always genial, his family said. He liked his job on the assembly line at the Nissan plant north of Jackson, where he had worked for about seven years.

“If you met him, the first thing you were going to see was that grand piano smile,” said his eldest sister, Barbara Anderson Young.

He made a point of taking care of old people and children and was helping his partner of 17 years, James Bradfield, raise the 4-year-old relative for whom Mr. Bradfield has legal guardianship. He sang tenor in the choir at the First Hyde Park Missionary Baptist Church and was so good “he’d have you falling out,” Mr. Bradfield, 44, said.

And if friends or relatives were not dressed well enough for an event, he would tease them into changing into something nicer.

No one is sure why Mr. Anderson was in the parking lot at the Metro Inn at 5 a.m. on June 26. He might have been at a party, Mr. Bradfield said. He was by his truck when two carloads of teenagers pulled off the interstate, according to prosecutors, who cited video from a motel security camera and statements from witnesses. Family members say he might have lost his keys, which have not been returned to them.

The video shows some of the teenagers, who prosecutors said had been at a party earlier that night, running back and forth between their cars and Mr. Anderson. He was beaten repeatedly and robbed, the district attorney said. Items like a cellphone, a ring and his wallet were taken, according to interviews with family members.

Then, one car drove off. But an F-250 pick-up — driven by Mr. Dedmon, the prosecutor said — pulled out of the parking lot and ran over Mr. Anderson as he staggered along the lot’s edge. The murder charge against Mr. Dedmon was raised to capital murder after District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith of Hinds County said he had evidence that Mr. Dedmon had robbed Mr. Anderson.

Why the teenagers drove across the Pearl River to that tough section of Jackson is at the heart of the case, which will be presented to a grand jury in a few weeks as a racially motivated crime, Mr. Smith said. There was no indication that Mr. Anderson’s sexual orientation was a factor in the crime.

John Rice, 18, is the only other person charged, his accusation one of simple assault. Mr. Smith and national civil rights groups believe they were seeking out a black person to harm. Witnesses told the police that one teenager yelled “white power” and that Mr. Dedmon, using a racial slur, later bragged about hitting Mr. Anderson.

Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is working with the family and their lawyer, Winston J. Thompson III. Mr. Dees said his group was investigating whether some of the teenagers involved may have loose ties to a gang with white-supremacist leanings. Mr. Smith is taking a more cautious approach.

“I don’t think there are aggressive gangs out there beating up black people,” Mr. Smith said. “I do think because of the political and economic structure and the re-engineering of society, it appears that certain parts of the country and Mississippi feel their culture is under attack.”

The Rev. Brian Richardson of Castlewood Baptist Church in Brandon, Miss., who went to Mr. Anderson’s funeral and has become close to the family, believes Mr. Dedmon is a product of his upbringing and a culture that does not do enough to stop bullying.

In an interview at his church in a nicely kept section of the county where Mr. Dedmon was raised, Mr. Richardson, who is white, said Mr. Dedmon had called his son, Jordan, 18, derogatory words for homosexual and mocked his friendship with black students when they were in high school together.

Mr. Richardson said he had raised the issue with school officials, and once had to deal with the police when Mr. Dedmon and some other boys drove to the family home.

The Richardsons point out that while racism is not unique to the Deep South, a deep streak of “us and them” exists.

“There is a subgroup that takes the Southern country-boy thing to another level,” Jordan Richardson said.

Mr. Dedmon’s lawyer did not respond to requests for an interview, but friends and family of some of the young people involved say the death was an accident.

At the Sonic Drive-In in Rankin County, where redneck can be a term of pride among the young whites who hang out nightly, the young people do not see Mr. Anderson’s death as a hate crime. And they say they are not racists.

“They don’t know how bad this hurts us,” said Shanna Brenemen, who attends Brandon High School and was close to Mr. Dedmon.

Although a conversation with them might be laced with racial slurs, they point to black friends, including some running Tater Tots and limeades to the cars parked at the drive-in. The way people are portraying them is simply wrong, they said.

“We’re just country, and whoever comes here, we welcome everybody,” said Mr. Dedmon’s younger sister, Tiffany, who will be a junior at Brandon High School. “This whole thing is getting blown out of proportion.”

In a letter he sent her from his jail cell, Mr. Dedmon said he had committed himself to Jesus. He warned his sister away from trouble. “I want you to get in the Bible for real,” he wrote. “I don’t want you to end up like this. I thought drinking was fun but look where it got me. And seriously choose your friends wisely, Tiff. My so-called friends got me in here.”

For Mr. Bradfield and Mr. Anderson’s siblings, the case is nothing but a hate crime. Jackson, for its part, has been slow to publicly address the case. Mayor Harvey Johnson, who is black, issued his first public statement on the matter last week. A public vigil was held on Aug. 14. A few hundred people marched from a nearby church to the motel parking lot and placed a wreath on the grassy spot near the curb where Mr. Anderson was hit.

Perhaps interest in the case was muted, people close to the family and in the community said, because Mr. Anderson’s family had been slow to come forward.

Although the family has created the James Craig Anderson Foundation for Racial Tolerance, they wanted to protect themselves from the media scrum and political opportunism that would surely come from a fist-pounding demand for justice, said Mr. Thompson, the lawyer. Mr. Anderson’s family and others wonder why only two of the seven teenagers were charged. And perhaps the toughest question of all: Could such a potent strain of racism exist in a city that has worked for decades to overcome it?

“The Help,” a film that explores the relationships between black maids and their white employers in the 1960s, sold out several shows during its debut weekend here.

People walking out of a theater an hour after the vigil last week said that although Jackson has changed in some ways, racism remains.

“It’s still here,” said B. J. Quick, 50, a black man who saw the movie with his girlfriend, who is white. “It’s just under the surface more.”

 

(source: NYTimes)

 

2 Miss. men plead guilty to hate crime charges

2014/12/04-Two more Mississippi men have now pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges for coming to Jackson last year to harass African-Americans citizens. Prosecutors wouldn’t say whether additional people could be charged.

On Tuesday, Jonathan Kyle Gaskamp, 20, of Brandon; and William Kyle Montgomery, 23, pleaded guilty in federal court in Jackson to one count of conspiracy to commit a hate crime and one count of committing a hate crime.

Their guilty pleas come nine months after three others, Deryl Dedmon, Dylan Wade Butler and John Aaron Rice, pleaded guilty in March to federal hate crime charges, culminating in the June 26, 2011, hit-and-run death of James Craig Anderson, a black man.

All five are in custody and awaiting sentencing on the federal charges. Conspiracy carries a maximum penalty of five years; hate crime a maximum of 10 years.

Federal prosecutors said the five were part of a group of young white males and females from Rankin County who came to Jackson to make a sport of attacking African Americans, especially those they believed were homeless or under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

“The defendants and their co-conspirators boasted about their participation in racially motivated physical assaults in Jackson on prior occasions, which involved the use of dangerous weapons that resulted in bodily injury to African-American victims,” Justice Department attorney Sheldon Beer said in court Tuesday.

The actions of Dedmon, 20, Butler, 20, Rice, 19, Montgomery and others culminated in the early morning of June 26 when Anderson, 47, was attacked and then run over by Dedmon. Dedmon already has been sentenced in Hinds County Circuit Court to two life terms in prison after pleading guilty to murder under a state hate crime law.

Gaskamp, however, wasn’t part of the group that came to Jackson the morning Anderson was killed. He had been on previous trips, including one where a black man was attacked in the parking lot of a golf course and begged for his life. Beer said the defendants laughed about the man begging for his life.

On Tuesday, the charges against Gaskamp and Montgomery were unsealed and they entered the guilty pleas before U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves.

Anderson’s sister, Barbara Anderson-Young, said “we are still looking for justice.”

Anderson-Young has advocated that all seven of the young whites who came to Jackson the morning her brother was killed should face justice.

James Craig Anderson was in a hotel parking lot and appeared to be intoxicated when he was approached by the first group of young people. Once Dedmon arrived on the seen, Anderson was physically attacked and then ran when Dedmon sped out of the parking lot.

A hotel video surveillance camera captured the image of Dedmon in his pickup truck running over Anderson.

The case was the first time the federal law known as the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act has been used in a case where the defendants’ actions resulted in a victim’s death.

The Shepard-Byrd Act, signed into law in 2009, was named for James Byrd Jr., who was killed in Jasper, Texas, in 1998 after being dragged behind a pickup on an asphalt road with his ankles bound by a chain. Shepard, a student, was tortured and murdered in 1998 in Wyoming because of a perception that he was homosexual.

On Tuesday, one of Anderson’s family members became emotional, and the family’s attorney, Winston Thompson, left the courtroom and brought back some paper towels for him.

On the other side, family members of Gaskamp appeared visibly shaken and Montgomery’s relatives cried.

The family members wouldn’t comment.

Gaskamp’s attorney, Rick Mitchell, said he wouldn’t comment at this time, but said later via phone that the family wanted to make it clear his client wasn’t with the group that came to Jackson when Anderson was killed. Montgomery’s attorney also wouldn’t comment.

 

(source: USA Today)

 

James Anderson Hate Murder Fallout Continues

2014/12/14-Upon pleading guilty Dec. 12, Sarah Adelia Graves and Shelbie Brooke Richards, both of Brandon, became two of the first women convicted under a federal hate-crime law passed in 2009. Graves and Richards, who are white, pleaded guilty in federal court in Jackson to charges associated with themurder of James Craig Anderson, a black man from Jackson, in the summer of 2011.

Information from the U.S. Attorney’s Office shows that Richards and Graves each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act for targeting African Americans for violent assaults over a period of months.

Six white men, all from Rankin County, had already pleaded guilty for their roles in the same plan, which ended with the killing of James Craig Anderson outside a Jackson motel in June 2011.

“Richards and Graves admitted that on June 26, 2011, they encouraged their co-conspirators to leave Brandon with them to assault “n*ggers” in Jackson. Richards further admitted that she encouraged her co-conspirator Deryl Paul Dedmon to hit Anderson with his truck,” a news release from the USAO states.

“In addition, Richards admitted that she falsely told law enforcement officers that she did not remember a fight between Dedmon and Anderson, and that she did not encourage Dedmon to strike Anderson with his truck.”

Deryl Paul Dedmon, who was behind the wheel of the truck that ran over and killed Anderson, along with John Aaron Rice, Dylan Wade Butler, William Kirk Montgomery, Jonathan Kyle Gaskamp and Joseph Dominick—all from Brandon—also previously pleaded guilty. Dedmon also previously pleaded guilty to murder in a state court.

Anderson’s death captured widespread attention after it was caught on a hotel surveillance camera. The video showed a white Jeep Cherokee leaving a hotel parking lot at 5:05 a.m. Less than 20 seconds later, a Ford truck backed up and then lunged forward. Anderson’s shirt was illuminated in the headlights before he disappeared under the vehicle. Anderson was beaten before he was run over.

Police say that was the last in a series of racially motivated attacks the group of white suburban residents undertook, which also included the beating of a black man near a Jackson golf course, the beating of another man who tried to sell the suburbanites drugs, attacks on pedestrians using beer bottles and a slingshot, and an attempt to run down another black man.

Federal prosecutors have said that during one violent trip, Dedmon hit an African American man in the back of the head with a beer bottle. On a separate occasion, Dedmon, Rice and Butler kicked another African American man in a west Jackson parking lot until he begged for his life.

Dominick and his friends also purchased bottled beer expressly to drink and use as ammunition in the assaults against black pedestrians, whom the group called n*ggers. During one incident, one of the members of the gang threw a beer bottle at a group of African Americans standing near the street, striking one of the people and knocking the person to the ground.

Dominick also carried a handgun for protection and, on one trip, the friends stopped at a sporting-goods store for the sole purpose of buying a slingshot to shoot metal ball bearings at African Americans.

With the pleas of Graves and Richards, only two defendants remain in the case. John Louis Blalack and Robert Henry Rice, both of Brandon, have pleaded not guilty and remain set for a Jan. 26 trial in U.S. District Court. With the two Friday pleas, eight people have been convicted, and all could take the stand against Blalack and Rice.

The lawyers of the two remaining defendants, though, have been putting up a more vigorous defense for their clients. Robert Henry Rice, who claims he was not even present on the night of Anderson’s death, wants a separate trial.

Lawyers for both Blalack and Rice have also attacked prosecutors’ proposed jury questions as too intrusive and designed to produce a biased jury. They also have asked to be able to eliminate extra jurors.

 

(source: Jackson Free Press)