A young man from Arkansas has received the first conviction at trial under the new federal hate crimes law enacted in 2009.

 

Frankie Maybee, 20, of Green Forest, was convicted by a federal jury on May 19 of multiple counts of committing and conspiring to commit a federal hate crime for attacking a group of Hispanics on June 20, 2010. The incident began when Maybee, along with 19-year-old Sean Popejoy and 19-year-old Curtis Simer, spotted the victims at a local gas station late at night, and then pursued them down the road in Maybee’s three-quarter ton jacked-up pickup truck. The co-conspirators yelled racist remarks at the Hispanics and rammed their vehicle with the pickup, causing the victims’ car to run off the road, slam into a tree and burst into flames. One of the victims suffered a fractured skull and a punctured lung.

 

Simer testified under a grant of immunity. Popejoy pleaded guilty on May 16. Maybee faces a maximum of 55 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 per violation.

 

The conviction came under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Shepard was a gay college student from Wyoming who was brutally beaten and left to die on a remote road in 1998, the same year Byrd, an African-American, was murdered by three white men in Jasper, Texas.

 

As serious as the trial Maybee trial was, it did have its light moment. Judge Jimm Larry Hendren had ordered the jurors to turn off their cell phones and was consequently embarrassed when his own phone began ringing under his robe. He handed the phone to the court clerk and announced that he would fine himself $5.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

Arkansas Jury Finds Man Guilty of Federal Hate Crime Related to the Assault of Five Hispanic Men (FBI)

Maybee Convicted for Hate Crime (by Ginger Shiras, Harrison Daily Times)

Rage Against Hispanics Described; Victim, Passenger in Truck Testify (by Ginger Shiras, Harrison Daily Times)