An Iowa white supremacist who brutally beat a black man in a Dubuque, Iowa, bar last year has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for what a federal judge slammed as a "brutal and outrageous attack," the Washington Post reports.
“This vicious attack threatened the most basic standards of human decency and dignity,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement Wednesday. “While no sentence, including this one, can undo the harm inflicted, it does send an unequivocal message that the Justice Department will vigorously prosecute hate crimes.”
Randy Metcalf will also have to pay $1,874.56 in restitution, the Justice Department announced.
As the Post notes, Metcalf did not try to hide his white supremacist leanings. He had a chest tattoo reading "FRYS," which is a reference to a white supremacist prison gang. On the night of the attack last January, he shouted racial slurs after getting into an argument over a jukebox with some women and one of their friends, Lamarr Sandridge, a black man.
During that time, the Justice Department noted, Metcalf bragged to the bar owner that he'd participated in cross burnings, announced to other people at the bar that he hated black people and even showed off a large swastika he had tattooed on his abdomen.
“This is what I’m about,” Metcalf told Sandridge, court records indicated.
Authorities said a fight broke out between Metcalf and one of the women, and Sandridge tried to protect her.
Metcalf's friends beat Sandridge unconscious, and while Sandridge lay on the floor, Metcalf "kicked him and stomped him in the face, and he kept kicking and stomping him in the face" until the bartender "had the courage to run over and shove him off," prosecutor Christopher Perras told jurors during the March trial.
Metcalf then left the bar, only to come back and continue assaulting Sandridge.
“He goes straight up to Lamarr, who’s still posing no threat, who’s still unconscious and bleeding on the floor, and he stomps on his head,” Perras said. “The defendant said a lot of hateful words that night, but I submit to you that his act right there—stomping on the head of another human being—tells you more than anything he ever could have said.”
Sandridge suffered multiple head injuries in the attack, including a broken orbital bone and a blood clot in one of his eyes. The woman who was attacked by Metcalf suffered a fractured cheekbone, the Post notes.
Read more at the Washington Post.