{"id":35922,"date":"2016-02-19T13:00:52","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T18:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/?p=35922"},"modified":"2016-02-18T13:49:18","modified_gmt":"2016-02-18T18:49:18","slug":"two-men-sentenced-for-three-hour-torture-of-gay-black-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/?p=35922","title":{"rendered":"Two Men Sentenced for Three Hour Torture of Gay, Black Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"gay<\/a><\/p>\n

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While\u00a0savagely\u00a0beating him with a frying pan, coffee mug, belt, chair and handgun, Ramiro Serrata Jr. (left) and Jimmy Garza Jr. allegedly poured\u00a0bleach in their\u00a0victim\u2019s face and eyes.\u00a0But their brutality\u00a0did not end there.<\/p>\n

During a\u00a0three-hour torture session in 2012, Garza and Serrata\u00a0also forced\u00a0the victim\u00a0to strip naked and clean up his blood, and\u00a0sodomized\u00a0him with a mop or broom. Throughout the ordeal, Garza and Serrata taunted\u00a0the gay, black man\u00a0with racial and homophobic slurs \u2014 before he finally escaped by jumping out a second-story window.<\/p>\n

\"ScreenOn Wednesday, a federal judge in Texas sentenced\u00a0Garza and Serrata to the maximum,\u00a015 years in federal prison,\u00a0after they each pleaded guilty last year to one count of conspiracy to commit hate crimes and one count of a hate crime based on the victim\u2019s sexual orientation. They will also be required to\u00a0pay $10,800 in restitution, serve three years of supervised release, and register as sex offenders.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI cannot imagine the brutality it must take to commit the crime you committed,\u201d U.S. District Judge Hayden Head told the defendants, according to The\u00a0Corpus Christi Caller Times<\/a><\/em>. \u201cThis type of brutality \u2026 words fail me except to say it\u2019s inhuman and disgusting.\u201d \u201cYou were born human,\u201d Head told them. \u201cYou abandoned your humanity for the viciousness of animals.\u201d<\/p>\n

The victim also entered\u00a0a statement before Hayden sentenced Garza and Serrata, the Caller Times<\/em> reports.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am two-fold devastated by the hateful nature of the attack,\u201d he said. \u201cFirstly, as a homosexual man in America, to be sodomized, in and of itself is egregious; but even more degrading was, as an African American, to be whipped like a slave.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was totally unrecognizable,\u201d the victim said. \u201cIt damaged my ego. I eventually stopped looking in the mirror.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was already a recreational drug user but in the immediate aftermath of my attacks, my drug use was off the charts,\u201d he said. \u201cI stopped caring about my life in general.\u201d<\/p>\n

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department\u2019s Civil Rights Division, said the sentencing \u201cmakes clear that assaults based on bias and hate will not be tolerated in this nation,\u201d according to\u00a0The\u00a0Washington Post<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThese crimes violate both our civil rights laws and most basic national value,\u201d Gupta said.<\/p>\n

Serrata apologized for his role in the crime, but Garza did not, according to the Caller Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A third defendant, Carlos Garcia Jr., also pleaded guilty in the case to making false statements to a law enforcement officer and is awaiting sentencing. (via Towleroad<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While\u00a0savagely\u00a0beating him with a frying pan, coffee mug, belt, chair and handgun, Ramiro Serrata Jr. (left) and Jimmy Garza Jr. allegedly poured\u00a0bleach in their\u00a0victim\u2019s face and eyes.\u00a0But their brutality\u00a0did not end there.
\nDuring a\u00a0three-hour torture session in 2012, Garza and Serrata\u00a0also forced\u00a0the victim\u00a0to strip naked and clean up his blood, and\u00a0sodomized\u00a0him with a mop or broom. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[5810,5808,5811,5809],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35922"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35924,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35922\/revisions\/35924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}