JACK ELLIOTT JR., Associated Press
JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) — Three young white men who admitted they were out hunting black people to attack when they beat, ran over and killed a 47-year-old car plant worker in Mississippi’s capital city were sentenced Tuesday to federal prison following a hate crimes investigation.
U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves sentenced Deryl Paul Dedmon to 50 years; John Aaron Rice to 18 ½ years; and Dylan Wade Butler to seven years on the most serious of the counts against them, commission of a hate crime. Dedmon, 22, Rice, 21, and Butler, 23, are all from Brandon, Mississippi.
Dedmon also faces two life sentences in state prison. He pleaded guilty in a Mississippi court in 2012 to capital murder and hate crime.
“What these people did was ugly, painful and sad and criminal,” Reeves said.
They were charged in the June 2011 death of James Craig Anderson.
All three, wearing red prison jumpsuits and shackled at the waist and ankles, took to a podium to apologize to members of Anderson’s family for their actions. “I want to tell the Anderson family how truly sorry I am,” Dedmon said.
