Hate-crime charges will not be filed against three self-described skinheads accused of brandishing weapons and threatening black residents of a Layton apartment complex.
Assistant Davis County Attorney Brian J. Namba said he would not file the hate-crime charges because Utah's hate-crime law is flawed.Charges of third-degree felony riot will stand against the three, however, Namba said.
Utah's law defines a hate crime as any primary criminal offense committed with the intent to intimidate or terrorize another person. It does not state the offense must be racially or ethnically motivated, Namba said.
Police say that on July 1, a group of four men and four teenagers carrying rifles, bats and other weapons threatened residents of the Quail Cove Apartments in Layton.
Witnesses told police that one of the adults, had a shotgun and yelled to black residents, "If you're not white, you don't belong in this complex."
The 19-year-old man said he is the organizer of a group called "Skinheads for White Independence." He said he and his friends went to Quail Cove because gang members there had threatened a friend's brother.
Prosecutors originally charged that man and two of the men arrested with him, a 19-year-old Salt Lake man and a 20-year-old Layton man, with misdemeanor counts but later dropped them and charged all three with third-degree felony riot.
They are scheduled for preliminary hearings Nov. 15 in 2nd Circuit Court in Farmington. The teenagers involved have been referred to juvenile court.
A 19-year-old Sunset man who was arrested with the group but said he was there dropping off his brother and a friend, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor contributing to the delinquency of a minor and was fined $100.
Another reason he will not file a hate crimes charge, Namba said, is that the offenses are based on the same alleged acts as the riot charges.
"Whenever you have two charges out of the same episode out of the same facts, even if you got two convictions, you can only be punished for one," he said. "The riot is the simpler charge to go with."