Two Atlanta Men Plead Guilty to Hate-Crimes Charges

The charges arose from an attack on a gay man, the subject of a video circulated widely on the Internet.

Trudy Ring

Trudy Ring is The Advocate’s senior politics editor and copy chief. She has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and LGBTQ+ weeklies/monthlies, trade magazines, and reference books. She is a political junkie who thinks even the wonkiest details are fascinating, and she always loves to see political candidates who are groundbreaking in some way. She enjoys writing about other topics as well, including religion (she’s interested in what people believe and why), literature, theater, and film. Trudy is a proud “old movie weirdo” and loves the Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s above all others. Other interests include classic rock music (Bruce Springsteen rules!) and history. Oh, and she was a Jeopardy! contestant back in 1998 and won two games. Not up there with Amy Schneider, but Trudy still takes pride in this achievement.

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Trudy Ring

April 19 2013 7:35 PM EST

November 17 2015 5:28 AM EST

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Two men have pleaded guilty to federal hate-crimes charges arising from the beating of a gay Atlanta man in 2012, an attack that was the subject of a widely circulated Internet video.

Christopher Cain and Dorian Moragne, both of Atlanta, pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to beating Brandon White because he is gay, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice. They and another man attacked White as he was leaving a grocery store in February of last year, using antigay epithets as they did so, while a fourth man recorded video of the assault on a cell phone.

Cain, Moragne, and Dareal Demare Williams all pleaded guilty last July to state charges resulting from the attack and were each sentenced to five years in prison, followed by five years' probation. Williams, a juvenile, was tried as an adult in Georgia but does not face federal charges, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Javaris Bradford, the man accused of making the video recording, remains at large.

The state charges did not include hate-crime provisions; Georgia law does not cover crimes based on sexual orientation or gender identity. This is the first case to be prosecuted in Georgia under the sexual orientation portion of the federal hate-crimes law.

"Violence against another person because of his or her sexual orientation has no place in our civilized society," Sally Quillian Yates, U.S. attorney for the northern district of Georgia, said in an emailed statement to the Journal-Constitution. "The citizens of this district should know that we are committed to aggressively prosecuting hate crime."