Jeffrey Conroy, the Long Island teen who was convicted of manslaughter as a hate crime for fatally stabbing an Ecuadorean immigrant in 2008, was sentenced to 25 years in prison yesterday. His father raged at the at the sentence, running out of the courtroom and yelling, "He was f---ing 17. This is mercy for crying out loud? Jesus, f---ing, Christ! Jesus Christ!"
Conroy, who is now 19 and admitted to police that he and friends had gone "beaner-hopping," specifically targeting Hispanic victims, had apologized to victim Marcelo Lucero's family before the judge made the announcement, "I'm really sorry for what happened to Mr. Lucero. I feel really bad for what the Lucero family is going through right now. Every day I wish it didn't happen." Lucero's brother Joselo said in a victim's impact statement, "I don't want this hate to continue. I want my brother to know that I'm fighting for the right reason, for human rights."
Conroy has tried to insist, in spite of his swastika tattoo and other actions, that he's not racist, noting how he listens to hip-hop and has a Bolivian girlfriend. His father Robert later spoke to Newsday, calling the maximum sentence "very unfair...I never expected the maximum," and claimed his son was "a good kid" and was seized as a "poster boy" for an "international story... The DAs and judges and everybody, all these politicians were boxed into it." And an alternate juror sympathized with his pain, "It was probably something he'd held inside for a long time. It was emotional for me. Again, both sides lost."
