Blackwell declined to testify during his trial.
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“You were soulless, malicious and a violent person on February 12”, Newkirk said. Marquez Tolbert broke down as he spoke about the attack in court. Blackwell is accused of pouring hot water on him and another man as they slept. Tolbert, 21, spent 10 days in the hospital.
A hate-filled homophobic Georgia man was sentenced to 40 years in prison after he scalded a sleeping gay couple with boiling water.
It took the jury about 90 minutes Wednesday afternoon to convict Blackwell on all 10 counts, including aggravated assault and aggravated battery.
He now faces forty years in prison.
Blackwell’s defense attorney acknowledged that he poured water on the pair, but asked jurors to find that it was reckless conduct.
“It’s not about hate”.
Blackwell’s defence attorney Monique Walker told jurors her client was reacting to behaviour he found disrespectful. “Get out of my house with all that gay”, Blackwell yelled before his assault.
The defense did not call any witnesses and did not present any evidence. But if he didn’t like the sentencing and decided not to take the deal, he would go to trial.
Prosecutor Fani Willis scoffed at the idea that Blackwell was simply motivated by outdated ideas.
“We’re not going back to when you get to treat people differently because of who they are”, she said in closing arguments. Blackwell, a long-distance truck driver, would often stay there when he was in town, prosecutors said. “And it’s a felonious act”, Willis said.
According to a police report, Blackwell told officers: “They were stuck together like two hot dogs … so I poured a little hot water on them and helped them out”. Gooden spent almost a month in a hospital, including two weeks in a medically induced coma, and Tolbert was hospitalized for 10 days, it said.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution quoted prosecutors as saying both victims required skin grafts after the attack. Both men testified about the difficulty they had performing even the most basic tasks such as eating and using the bathroom, upon their release from the hospital.
Instead of numerous felonies with which he is charged, Blackwell should be convicted only of battery, Walker told the jurors.
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Georgia doesn’t have a hate crime law.
