Woman Gets 9 Years in Racial Beating Death

A woman who as a teenager helped beat a homeless black man to death because of his race was sentenced to the maximum nine years in prison Wednesday after declaring racism “totally disgusting and stupid.”

“I would like to thank the jury people--they know who they are,” Jessica Colwell, 20, said during the short hearing. “They were so fair and I owe them a lot, especially the black jurors who could have held a grudge and put that aside. They saved my life.”

Her co-defendants, Randall Rojas, 24, and Ritch Briant, 20, were found guilty of premeditated, race-related first-degree murder, for which they were sentenced to prison for life.

Prosecutors sought the same penalty for Colwell, but an all-minority jury decided she did not intend to kill the victim and convicted her of the lesser crime of race-motivated involuntary manslaughter.

Colwell could be released as early as 2001.

Four years ago today, Rojas and another man attacked Milton Walker Jr. in the vacant Lancaster lot where he lived. The accomplice has testified against his friends and is being tried on a lesser charge.

After Rojas repeatedly smashed the victim’s face with a stick, leaving him unconscious, Colwell returned to the scene with Briant.

As Walker lay motionless in the dirt, Colwell hit him with a pipe and a stick.

“The idea that a 16-year-old would pick up a pipe and hit him in the head, in the place where he had already been compromised, is unspeakable,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Jacquelyn Lacey said. “It says to me she has a heart that is so cruel and so black and so dark that it cannot be rehabilitated.”

But on Wednesday, Colwell decried racism and complained that, because of media reports about the case, she is getting letters from “skinheads I don’t even know. They think I’m some kind of hero.”

Her short address to Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lance Ito contained no words of remorse, only criticism of her accusers and the media, praise of the judge and jury and relief that she will walk out of prison while still a young woman.

“It was a mercy verdict. I am totally blissed out by the verdict,” Colwell said. “I’m glad it’s over with and this man can rest in peace.”