The suspects — Hawaiians whose families had lived in Kahakuloa village for generations — told police they believed Kunzelman was trespassing. Ultimately, they pleaded guilty to local prosecutors’ charges of assault and were sentenced to probation.
Federal authorities called the attack something else: a hate crime, motivated in part because Kunzelman is White.
Nine years after the beating, U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright on Thursday sentenced Kaulana Alo-Kaonohi, 32, and Levi Aki Jr., 33, to more than six years and more than four years in federal prison, respectively, in a case that highlighted lingering racial and ethnic tensions in Hawaii steeped in the island’s history.
The sentencing comes amid heightened concern at the Justice Department about a spike in hate crimes nationwide, which reached a two-decade-high in 2020, according to FBI data.
In 2020, the FBI reported, there were 2,871 racially motivated attacks against Black victims, the most of any group, and 869 against Whites, the second-highest figure.
Federal prosecutions in cases involving White people targeted because of their skin color are rare, former Justice Department officials said. A spokeswoman for the agency said the agency does not compile statistics on hate crime prosecutions based on the race of victims.
In hate crime cases, prosecutors must establish that a defendant was motivated, at least in part, by bias. The Hawaii…
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