Prosecutor Seeks Death Penalty And Hate Crime Charges in Atlanta Spa Shootings

On Tuesday, two separate grand juries indicted a man accused of killing eight people at spas in the Atlanta area on murder charges as one prosecutor said she will seek hate crime charges and the death penalty. 

As reported by The Associated Press, the 19-count Fulton County indictment includes charges of murder, felony murder, aggravated assault and domestic terrorism.

The domestic terrorism charge said the shooter committed multiple illegal acts “which were interrelated by distinguishing characteristics, with the intent to cause serious bodily harm and to kill individuals and groups of individuals, and with the intent to intimidate the civilian population of this state and of its political subdivisions.”

Six of the eight victims in the shootings were of Asian descent and the shooter is white. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis also filed notice that she will seek a hate crime sentence enhancement and the death penalty against the man. AP reported, “The hate crime charges are based on the actual or perceived race, national origin, sex and gender of the four women killed, the notice says.”

At a news conference Tuesday, Willis said that her decisions to seek out such charges “send a message that everyone within this community is valued.”

In a news release, Cherokee County District Attorney Shannon Wallace said, “Today we have taken another step forward in seeking justice for the victims of this crime and for their family members.”

The arraignment has not yet been scheduled, but Wallace said she will decide whether or not to seek the death penalty before it takes place. 

Willis changed her previous pledge to not seek death penalty charges as district attorney. At a 2020 candidate forum during her campaign for district attorney last year, Willis was asked “Will you commit to refuse to seek the death penalty?” Willis answered yes to the question. 

“Last year I told the voters of Fulton County that I could not imagine a circumstance where I would seek (the death penalty),” Willis said during the recent news conference. “Unfortunately, a case has arisen … that I believe warrants the ultimate penalty and we shall seek it.”

AP reported that the killings are eligible for the death penalty because each was done while the shooter was in the act of carrying out another capital offense, namely the killings of the other victims, Willis’ notice of intent said. Each killing was also “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible, or inhuman in that it involved depravity of mind” and was done during an act of domestic terrorism, the notice says.

The series of shootings at Atlanta-area massage parlors in March left eight dead, and after an extended manhunt, police arrested a 21-year-old man. 

The Daily Wire reported:

Although a motive was not immediately apparent, media, including The New York Times, began to speculate that the suspect’s decision to target the massage parlors, staffed largely by Asian females, was indicative of an anti-Asian hate crime and connected the shooting spree to recent attacks on elderly individuals of Asian descent in places like San Francisco, California, and New York City (though even the most high-profile of those attacks do not appear to have been motivated specifically by racial animus). 

The suspect, however, spoke directly to police shortly after capture and took “full responsibility” for the attacks, per Fox News. Authorities said in a news conference that, based on his confession, they believe the shootings were “not racially motivated” and that “[the shooter] instead allegedly opened fire because he saw the locations as ‘an outlet for him’ to succumb to purported sex-addiction temptations.”

“According to police, [the shooter] claimed his attacks were not racially motivated, but rather sees the massage parlor locations as allowing him to feed ‘a temptation’ that he was trying ‘to eliminate,’ police said,” per Fox. The shooter also intended to carry out further attacks, and had planned to drive from Atlanta to an unknown location in Florida. He reportedly “made indicators that he has some issues, potentially sexual addiction, and may have frequented some of these places in the past,” the police noted. 

AP reported in March that Georgia’s new hate crimes law does not allow for a standalone hate crime, but is rather a sentence enhancer. “A hate crime charge can be included in an indictment or added at some point before trial,” per the outlet. A jury can decide whether it was a hate crime after someone is convicted, resulting in an extra penalty. Republican Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia signed the bill into law last summer. 

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