Three Men Accused Of Hate Crimes Trio Charged With Attacks On Hispanics
A federal grand jury in Boise has indicted three Nampa men on federal civil rights and weapons charges for a series of alleged hate crimes targeting Hispanic adults and children last year.
U.S. Attorney Betty Richardson said Thursday that Scott Brooke, 18, Jack David Carter, 18, and Chris Maurer, 19, each are charged with six counts, including conspiracy to violate civil rights laws and using an illegal sawed-off shotgun to commit a crime of violence.
Three Nampa juveniles also were indicted on civil rights charges.
Maurer was arrested Wednesday night. Carter surrendered early Thursday, and police were trying to locate Brooke. Maurer and Carter were being held in the Canyon County Jail in Caldwell.
“The people of Canyon County simply will not tolerate criminal conduct based on racial hatred,” Canyon County Prosecutor David Young said.
“Hate crimes reflect a cancer of the soul and have no place in our society,” Bill Lann Lee, acting assistant attorney general for civil rights, said by telephone at a news conference announcing the indictments. “What is perhaps most disturbing are the allegations that Hispanic children were a target of a cowardly attack, simply because of the color of their skin.”
If convicted on the civil rights charges, the men each face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each count. Conviction on the weapons charges carries a mandatory 10-year prison term. No trial date has been set.
Federal law provides for more limited penalties for the juveniles who were charged.
The indictment of Brooke, Carter and Maurer stems from what prosecutors allege were racially motivated attacks last summer on several Hispanic men, women and children. Among other things, prosecutors allege that the men physically assaulted Hispanics at or near their homes five times last summer, including two occasions in which they struck their victims with firearms.
The men also are accused of using vehicles to chase a 14-year-old and a 9-year-old, both Hispanics, through the streets of the children’s neighborhood while yelling racial slurs. And they are accused of attacking two Hispanic men visiting friends, yelling racial slurs and telling their victims they should go back to Mexico.
On July 4, the men are accused of assaulting a Hispanic man and woman as they were moving in with the man’s parents in Nampa, and on July 13 of assaulting a Hispanic with an illegal and unregistered sawed-off shotgun.
“I can think of nothing more important to the people of Idaho than protecting their basic right to live peacefully in their neighborhoods,” Richardson said.