Richard Drew / AP
Elliot Morales, who was convicted of murder as a hate crime for gunning down a gay man in New York City's Greenwich Village in 2013, was sentenced Tuesday to 40 years to life in prison.
"Mr. Morales, yours is a legacy of death, nothing more, nothing less," Manhattan Supreme Court Justice A. Kirke Bartley said.
The charge carried a minimum sentence of 20 years to life.
"To family and friends of Mark Carson, it is important to hear from me personally. I'm truly really, really, really sorry," Morales said at his sentencing hearing.
In May 2013, Morales, 36, encountered Carson and another man walking down the street on a Saturday night and started taunting the two of them. He called them "faggots" and yelled other anti-gay slurs at the men before fatally shooting Carson point-blank in the head.
Morales, who represented himself in court, denied that the attack was hate motivated, saying he was bisexual and had had relationships with transgender women.
"It is beyond my comprehension how someone like myself, who is bisexual, part of LGBT community can be convicted of a hate crime," Morales said.
It took two days of deliberation in March for the jury to find Morales guilty of all charges against him.
“Motivated by irrational rage, the defendant targeted and executed a defenseless young man based on his sexual orientation after taunting and insulting the victim and his companion,” Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said in a statement following the guilty verdict.
LINK: Bisexual Man Convicted Of Hate Crime In Killing Of Gay Man
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1PrjdlM
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