Ex-Student Gets 1 Year for Racial Hate Letters
A Los Angeles federal judge sentenced a 19-year-old Van Nuys man Thursday to a year in prison for mailing threatening racial hate letters to administrators at Grant High School and a fellow student.
Bobby Snyder, a white former Grant student, pleaded guilty in February to three counts of mailing threatening communications to a black classmate, the black assistant principal and the principal, who is married to a black woman.
Defense attorney Donald Calabria had argued for probation, telling U.S. District Judge Mariana Pfaelzer that Snyder was sorry for what he did and that, because of the nature of his crimes, Snyder could be subject to harm by black inmates in prison. But Assistant U.S. Atty. Lee Michaelson urged Pfaelzer to send Snyder to prison for the 12 to 18 months allowed under federal sentencing guidelines, arguing that hate crimes are “the acid that erodes the trust” that holds a multicultural society together.
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