Legal News

Hate crime status unlikely for Your Black Muslim Bakery slayings

By Richard Binder

The July 2007 slaying of Michael Wills, in which two members of Your Black Muslim Bakery have been charged, was tinged with racial overtones, yet those men aren't charged with a hate crime.

Experts say hate-crime cases are particularly difficult to prove and, in this case, would not bring added potential penalties beyond what the defendants already face. But riends and relatives of Wills, who was white, are concerned that prosecutors haven't done all they can against defendants Yusuf Bey IV ? the last leader of the now-defunct bakery ? and Antoine Mackey, one of Bey's followers charged with pulling an assault rifle's trigger to end Wills' life.

Devaughndre Broussard, another Bey IV follower who has admitted to killing journalist Chauncey Bailey, told a prosecutor in March that Bey IV and Mackey bragged they killed Wills because of his race. The two saw him walking in North Oakland as they were discussing a string of racially motivated murders in the 1970s known as the Zebra killings.

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Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on May 26, 2009 (boomark / email).