Posted on 09/22/2009 1:28:59 PM PDT by stan_sipple
A former football coach was sentenced Tuesday morning to a year in jail for making racially charged threats to employees at Ameritas, where he worked.
"Very clearly what stands out in this case is Jose Jefferson made a big mistake," said his attorney, David Watermeier, who sought probation for his client.
Jefferson, 38, has taken responsibility and has no history of criminal behavior.
Watermeier said an anonymous letter showed up on Jefferson's desk at Ameritas, where he was working as a licensed insurance broker. When he tried to find out who sent it, the attorney said, he was rebuked.
Watermeier said co-workers resented that Jefferson had been hired through a friend and considered him less qualified.
Jefferson now accepts responsibility for writing two anonymous letters in response that anonymously threatened death to all blacks and said one who worked there would be killed on a date in February.
Ameritas gave black employees the option of not coming to work for two days, police said.
In March, police arrested Jefferson and Christina Donald, who has admitted helping Jefferson write the letters. She is awaiting sentencing.
Jefferson, who now lives in Illinois where he works at a sports equipment company, pleaded no contest to a felony charge of making terroristic threats in June.
In court Tuesday, he said he was neither proud nor happy about what he did, but that he had felt wronged and the situation engulfed him.
He said he should have walked away from the job, but with two young sons with cerebral palsy, his family needed the money and benefits.
"I let the actions of others provoke me," Jefferson said. "But two wrongs don't make a right."
Deputy Lancaster County Attorney Holly Parsley said whenever racism is an element, it adds more stress and more tension. That Jefferson was part of the race he targeted in the letters didn't mitigate things, she said.
It was a very frightening experience for employees, Parsley said.
"This is not just a mistake or a bad mistake. It's criminal behavior," she said.
She said the defense told District Judge Karen Flowers not to judge Jefferson on this alone, "but that is what we're here for."
Flowers said she lost sleep over what sentence to give Jefferson, but her decision came down to considering the deterrent effect jail time would have not only on him but others.
"Your actions hit right into the things that scare people the most, Mr. Jefferson," the judge said.
She sentenced him to a year in jail. With credit for good time, he will be in jail for 246 days, minus four he's already served.
Jefferson coached Lincoln High School football in 2005, leaving in spring 2006. He also was an assistant at Nebraska Wesleyan University and Midland Lutheran College, and he was head coach of the Lincoln Capitols and Lincoln Lightning indoor pro football teams.
do they teach english in journalism classes, or what?
almost unreadable...
i thought of that, plus why do reporters use so many sentence fragments now?
Not really pointed out in the article, but this is yet another example of the “fake hate crime.”
If whitey doesn’t live up to your racist notions, perpetrate a hate crime against yourself.
a real shame, the defendant coached two indoor football teams in Lincoln for a few years, he was very articulate on the radio.
right, if the defendant had received a racist threat letter, you would think he would report it immediately for a possible hositle environment case.
If he plead on making a “terroristic” threat then how come the article is all about racism? Because it fits the guidelines that the GRM(govt. run media) have adopted since the Zero was crowned.
I think one reason it’s so unintelligible is that the author is trying to hide the fact that the perp is black and that it was a hoax hate crime. If the author had just written that up-front, some of the rest of it would have made more sense.
It’s another example of the stupidity that follows from political correctness. It makes a feller want to weep for the dumbing down that has taken place.
sounds like the judge handed down a pretty stiff sentence, and she is pretty liberal.
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