Supremacist Sentenced to Death for Hate Crime

A 22-year-old white supremacist Friday became the first person in California to be sentenced to death because a murder was committed out of racial hatred.

Before pronouncing sentence, Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert R. Fitzgerald sought to dispel any lingering doubts that defendant Gunner Lindberg deserves to die.

Reading from a chilling letter Lindberg wrote to a relative, the judge recounted how he boasted of stabbing, slashing the throat and stomping the skull of victim Thien Minh Ly on Super Bowl Sunday in 1996.

Ly, a graduate of UCLA and Georgetown University who had dreamed of one day becoming the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, was skating on a high school tennis court when he was accosted by Lindberg and a companion.

The letter, which Lindberg sent to a cousin in Missouri, begins almost nonchalantly. “Oh, I killed a Jap a while ago. I stabbed him to death at Tustin High School.

“I walked right up to him and he was scared. I looked at him and said, ‘Oh, I thought I knew you,’ and he got happy that he wasn’t gonna get jumped, then I hit him.”

“I stabbed him in the side about seven or eight times. He rolled over a little, so I stabbed his back 18 or 19 times. Then he lay flat and I slit . . . his throat on his jugular vein.”

Lindberg displayed no emotion Friday as the judge read from the letter and then sentenced him to die. The former stock clerk offered no explanation or words of remorse to the victim’s family, who referred to Lindberg in court as “the monster” who took away their 24-year-old son and brother.

“Every single day since he was brutally murdered, we have been living in a nightmare,” said the victim’s sister, Thu Ly. “The unimaginable pain and devastation is beyond words.”

Although it has been nearly two years since the killing of the Vietnamese American honor student, his family’s grief is still palpable.

“I miss him every minute,” sobbed Dao Huynh, his 48-year-old mother, as she left the courthouse. “It’s difficult to live. I want to die with him. Before I sleep I think of him. When I eat, I miss him. I can’t believe he died.”

Prosecutors contended that Lindberg chose to knife and rob Ly based on the color of his skin. He was stabbed more than 50 times, including 14 wounds to the heart.

A jury recommended the death penalty for Lindberg in October after convicting him of first-degree murder with the special circumstances that the killing was a hate crime and took place during the commission of a robbery.

The state attorney general’s office confirmed Friday that this was the first time a hate crime special circumstance had led to a death sentence. “There’s nobody else on death row with that circumstance,” said Dane Gillette, senior assistant attorney general.

Fitzgerald said Lindberg’s crime showed a “high degree of cruelty, callousness and viciousness” and said that he does not believe the defendant’s age--he was 20 at the time of the killing--should be a factor in determining his punishment.

Although Ly’s family strongly urged execution for Lindberg, they said their reasons were more for the safety of society than for their own peace of mind.

“I’m happy the case is over and happy no innocent person will be hurt by him,” the victim’s mother said.