Hate On Trial

When Lance Corporal Carlos Colbert joined the Marines he took an oath to defend this country against all enemies foreign and domestic. He never dreamed he'd find that enemy at a party outside San Diego, Calif. A mob of white men attacked him at that party and broke his neck.

He is paralyzed from the shoulders down. Five men were arrested. The police interviewed 75 witnesses. Some might call this strong case, if ever there was one, to put hate on trial. Prosecutors tried to send the defendants away for life. They didn't come close.

But as 60 Minutes II Correspondent Scott Pelley first reported last year, Colbert's life was abruptly changed forever by a vicious attack. Find out how his case was eventually settled this summer.

Colbert used to be a powerful athlete growing up outside Baltimore, Md. Even as a boy, he knew he wanted to follow his father into the Marine Corps. So after high school, he enlisted and set out for San Diego.

Colbert doesn't know who hit him, because the punch was thrown from behind. But he can never forget the devastating blow.

"That moment was like the worst moment in my life. The pain was unbearable," he remembered. "My body's going into convulsions, and I'm seeing these guys. I'm looking down at these guys punching me, kicking me, and kick(ing) me in my head, and I wonder why, why me?"

"'Get the nigger, kill the nigger, kill the nigger, don't let the nigger up,'" Colbert said his assailants had said.

"And just before I got in the car, 'Now try to protect this country, nigger,'" he added.

Those are words that Tim Bullard can never forget. He was the host of the party at his home in Santee, a town outside San Diego.

There was a lot of drinking, and Bullard said there were 75 people there, mostly white. A few had a reputation for racism.

"One of the big things that was said at my party was, 'Hey, turn off that nigger music.' Well this was my house, and I can play what I want but...you could feel the tension and animosity rising," Bullard said.

One black man told police that he left the party early after being called a nigger and threatened with a beating. The tensions reached a flash point in the driveway. It was a fight over a woman. Colbert was not a part of that fight, but trying to leave. He didn't get far.

"I run down to the driveway, and I see Carlos on the ground," Bullard explained.

"And his face was a little bloody, and I kneeled down to see what's going on, and all of a sudden I hear this, 'Leave the nigger on the ground. That's where he belongs. White power, white power.' I mean real, real loud," Bullard said.

"One person [was]saying that...and he had his hands up in the air. He was real proud about it," he said.

While Colbert lay paralyzed, the men continued to stomp him. The fifth vertebra, down near the base of his neck, was shattered.

After returning to Maryland with his family, Colbert had some strength in his left shoulder, but beyond that he could not feel and could not move. Many days it took his mother, Maria, nearly two hours to get him up in the morning.

"Why did this happen to my child?" she asked. "I even felt guilty that it had happened to my child. What did I do wrong or what...didn't I do to help him in life? To be able to understand that there is prejudice in the world."

Colbert's attackers, Jessie Lawson, Steven Newark, Bobby Rio, Jed Jones and Trent Solis, potentially faced life imprisonment. The district attorney charged them with conspiracy, torture, aggravated mayhem, assault and the commission of a hate crime.

There was no physical evidence, so the case depended entirely on witnesses. In the early days of the investigation, several witnesses said they saw the men beating Colbert. One witness heard them bragging about the beating and passing around brass knuckles. Carlos Colbert's father, Melvin, thought prosecutors had a case.

"A lot of people came forward," said Melvin Colbert. "But at the end, at the time of the trial, everybody claimed, 'I didn't see nothing. I didn't see it either. I didn't mean that.'"

At a pretrial hearing, some witnesses who had told police they saw Carlos Colbert being attacked suddenly changed their stories.

"Everybody wants to lie. Nobody wants to get these young men in trouble. But what about my son?" asked Melvin Colbert.

"At the preliminary hearing we found out that witnesses recanted their stories," said Deputy District Attorney Hector Jimenez. He literally saw his case falling apart.

"Their original versions were changed. We found out that some of our best witnesses were heavily intoxicated. We found out that other witnesses, that would have been great witnesses, were biased for the defendants," Jimenez explained.

In the end, the prosecutor could only get one of the defendants to admit to a hate crime. Jesse Lawson got nine years. All the others pleaded guilty only to assault. Subsequently, the district attorney dropped the hate crime charge because of the problems he had with the witnesses. The rest of the defendants walked in seven months.

"You get five people, five big, grown men, kick and stomp you and chant the intent is to kill. And then bragged about it. So, I go to court; they're telling me I'm going to give these guys one year," said Melvin Colbert.

"Time served - that's an insult. If it (were) five blacks beating one white, they'd still be in jail. There wouldn't be no such thing as a plea bargain," he added.

The Colberts hated the plea bargain. In addition, the defendants were allowed to pead without anyone admitting to throwing the first punch, the one that crippled Carlos Colbert. The frustration was overwhelming when it was Maria Colbert's turn to address the court.

"He was defenseless on that ground. And they continued to stop on him and kick him," she said at the hearing. "What about how his injury (affected) his life?"

"It's hurtful," she continued. "It is so hurtful to come in here and face you guys here. And I want to know who hit him! The evidence is not there. Who hit him? One of you hit him!"

"Why did you hit him with those brass knuckles? You just don't take a fist and break a neck. Somebody hit him! And if there's witnesses or people in the community of Santee, I really feel saddened for you if you are not coming forward with the truth," she said.

Bullard didn't see who threw the crippling punch, but he had no doubt this was a crime of hate.

"There were at least 30 people around Carlos in a circle before he was hit," said Bullard. "He was breaking up two people, and when there's a fight going on, everyone wants to see what's going on and for them not to find out who actually hit Colbert is just absurd."

"This guy's throwing his hands in the air in some kind of joy. 'All right I got somebody,' or whatever," Bullard continued. "And that's how he was preaching this anger and hate, just like, evil."

The man Bullard was describing is Bobby Rio. Although several witnesses heard Rio yelling racial slurs, he was allowed to plead without admitting to a hate crime. Rio agreed to an interview, but the morning 60 Minutes II arrived, he backed out.

His parents, Janet and Frank Rio, became vocal defenders of the men. They were angry their son spent any time in jail, and they insisted what happened the night of the party was not a crime at all.

"I believe this was a fight," said Janet Rio. "There was nothing about hate, racism in this fight. My son is not a racist. I believe that the other boys are not racists."

"What bothers me is how this whole incident was blown out of proportion, not because somebody was injured but because of the color of this person's skin," said Frank Rio. "And I don't believe for one minute that this was a hate crime."

"Many witnesses came forth and said they saw Carlos Colbert...so intoxicated he had fallen down several times," Janet Rio said. "At one point people put him on top of the hood of a car; he had slid right off the hood of the car."

Carlos Colbert's family said his only chance at justice vanished when the witnesses changed their stories. Why did that happen? Bullard told 60 Minutes II something that he had never told anyone. During the critical pretrial hearing, he said, there was pressure on witnesses to forget what they saw. When he came to the courthouse to testify, he was approached by a friend of the defendats.

"One of the witnesses says, 'Hey, don't say anything to hurt our buddies,'word for word," Bullard recalled. "So then when I hear about how people are changing their stories...and the prosecutions all upset."

"They had to drop down almost 15, 30 years, maybe life sentences for these guys because they didn't have enough evidence. People were backing out," Bullard added. "That kind of made me think, these guys are cowards."

Deputy District Attorney Jimenez told 60 Minutes II that another witness said his brother was approached at school and warned that his family should not get involved.

"Undoubtedly, some witnesses were probably intimidated," said Jimenez. "I wish we would have had more evidence but we didnt. We were dealt a card, and we made the best of what we had."

"It's like a betrayal of everything, everything you believe in concerning your country," Maria Colbert said. "The laws of the land, that you can hit someone, paralyze them to that degree, and walk away with less than a years time; it's something I cannot comprehend."

But Carlos Colbert insisted that he does not hate his alleged assailants. "Hate can kill you. It can eat you up inside," said Carlos Colbert. "You got me in a wheelchair but you're not going to let my spirits go down every day because I'm thinking about hating you."

September 2000 Report

Last month a judge ordered Jessie Lawson to pay Carlos Colbert $9 million though it doesn't seem Lawson will ever have the money to pay.

The other defendants, however, have agreed to pay settlements that add up to a little more than $1 million.

That money will go toward Carlos Colbert's medical bills.

His rehabilitation continues though there is nor expectation he will walk again.