Will Columbus shooting suspect allegedly targeting white men face a hate crime charge?
Will a suspect who allegedly targeted white men in a shooting spree over the weekend in Columbus be charged with a hate crime?
He may, District Attorney Mark Jones said Tuesday, but not right away.
Standing outside Columbus Recorder’s Court after a hearing Tuesday for Justin Tyran Roberts, Jones said he believes the evidence is enough to show Roberts broke Georgia’s new hate crimes law this past weekend in an alleged shooting spree targeting white men who appeared to be soldiers.
“I think there’s probable cause that it’s a hate crime,” he said, adding the time to pursue that charge is when the case goes to a grand jury.
“There’s definitely probable cause to present it to a grand jury to see if they think it’s a hate crime, but right now I think it qualifies as a hate crime, or at least there’s a fair probability, based on what (Roberts is) saying,” Jones said.
In separate court hearings on two of the three shootings in Phenix City and Columbus on Friday night and Saturday afternoon, a Columbus detective said Roberts, who is Black, told investigators he targeted white men because they had taken from him all his life.
Roberts admitted to all three shootings, and added a bizarre claim while explaining his motive, Detective Brandon Lockhart testified Tuesday:
“He basically stated the military white men had taken from him a lot, and also had been shooting him with a slingshot, that consisted of a syringe that irritated his skin,” Lockhart said. “That was his exact quote.”
Police found no wounds to substantiate that, the officer said. Roberts’ attorneys with the public defenders office said he apparently is possibly delusional, and they asked that he have a mental health evaluation.
Is it a hate crime?
The hate crimes law the Georgia General Assembly passed last year outlaws intentionally selecting victims based on their actual or perceived “race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender, mental disability, or physical disability.”
If the underlying offense is a misdemeanor, the added penalty is six to 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $5,000. If it’s a felony, the added sentence is two years in prison, plus the $5,000 fine.
State Rep. Calvin Smyre of Columbus, who helped push the bill through the General Assembly before Gov. Brian Kemp signed it into law on June 26, 2020, said the two-year add-on penalty in a felony case was the result of compromise between legislators.
“Those were the amounts both sides would agree to,” he said.
Because Georgia was one of only four states with no hate crimes law, the legislature was pressed by business leaders and others to get one passed after three white men allegedly chased down and fatally shot Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery on Feb. 23, 2020, in Brunswick, Smyre added.
“There was a lot of pressure in the General Assembly to get this done,” he said.
State leaders had worked for years on the effort, starting in 2017, he said. A hate crimes bill passed in the year 2000, but the Georgia Supreme Court struck it down four years later, finding the language too vague.
Smyre said he could not speculate on whether Roberts’ case fits the law’s new, more precise language, because he was not familiar with the evidence. “I would have to know the specifics of it,” he said.
Jones said that though he thought Roberts’ case worthy of a grand jury review, for possible hate crimes charges, he wasn’t sure whether a trial jury would find the evidence convincing.
“I don’t know whether it meets the reasonable doubt standard, because the testimony today was that he was targeting white males he thought were in the military,” the district attorney said.
If Roberts was allegedly choosing victims based on military service, it would not qualify under the law, he said. But choosing victims based on race would.
“The military, while it is an important class in our community, it is not a defined class under the hate crimes bill,” Jones said. “Now if he’s targeting white males only and that kind of thing, I think it would.”
Prosecuting the case
Asked how prosecutors would pursue the case, he said the law offers no specifics.
“There’s not much guidance from the legislature on that, but from reading the statute, it appears that we need to put something in the indictment giving the defendant notice that we are seeking a hate crimes sentence enhancement.”
Though the added penalty is only two years, a jury’s finding a felony to be a hate crime is likely to influence how a judge weighs prison sentences for other convictions, after a guilty verdict, Jones said.
“Obviously, if the jury weighs in and says it’s a hate crime, the judge is going to lean toward the higher end of the sentencing spectrum, and those felonies that involve violent crimes in Georgia are one to 20 (years), or a very significant amount of time,” he said.
One to twenty years in prison is the penalty range for aggravated assault.
Roberts could spend the rest of his life in prison, were he convicted on all his charges and given the maximum penalty for each:
- In the shooting at 10:20 p.m. Friday outside 1020 Broadway, where three people were wounded, Roberts is charged with three counts of aggravated assault, plus one count each of using a gun to commit a crime and being a convicted felon with a firearm.
- In the shooting at 2 p.m. Saturday, under the Oglethorpe Bridge at Fourth Street and Broadway where one man was wounded, he is charged with aggravated assault, using a gun to commit a crime, being a convicted felon with a gun, and theft by receiving stolen property.
Lockhart testified Tuesday that Roberts admitted to all the shootings, including one at 8:15 p.m. Friday outside a Phenix City hotel on Whitewater Avenue, where a man was shot while getting out of his car. Roberts could face charges there, too, Phenix City police said.
Besides the total 60 years he could get for aggravated assault here in Georgia, Roberts could get up to 10 years for having a stolen gun, five years for being a convicted felon with a gun, and a mandatory extra five years for using the gun to commit a felony.
Added to all that, were he convicted, would be two years for committing a hate crime.
This story was originally published June 16, 2021 at 5:51 PM.