PHILADELPHIA WOMAN SENTENCED FOR FEDERAL HATE CRIME

WASHINGTON – A Philadelphia woman, Kia Reid, was sentenced Wednesday in federal court in Philadelphia to eight months confined to a community corrections center as part of two years supervised probation, following her conviction on a federal civil rights charge, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Rena J. Comisac and U.S. Attorney Patrick L. Meehan for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania announced.

At her guilty plea on June 22, 2007, Reid admitted to committing a federal hate crime by sending a note threatening violence to her supervisor at work, who is Arab and Muslim American, in an attempt to interfere with the supervisor’s federally protected employment activity. During the early-morning hours of Monday, Oct. 2, 2006, Reid left an anonymous threatening letter in her supervisor’s office at the Sheraton Suites Hotel in Philadelphia. Reid had affixed words and phrases which appeared to be cut from publications, including the phrases “REMEMBER 9/11,” “you and your kids will pay,” “tie onto the fence,” “strategically planned,” and “death.”

“Attacks against individuals because of their race, ethnicity, or religion are contemptible and un-American, and will not be tolerated,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Rena J. Comisac said.

The case was investigated by the Philadelphia Field Office of the FBI and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael Schwartz and Jeffery Whitt and Civil Rights Division Trial Attorney Eric L. Gibson.

Since 9/11, the Justice Department has prosecuted 38 defendants for federal bias crimes against Muslims, Arabs, Sikhs and South Asians, with 34 convictions to date. The Department has also assisted in more than 150 state and local prosecutions involving bias crimes against these groups