D.C. jury convicts man for hate crime assault against gay couple
A D.C. Superior Court jury on Dec. 12 found a 42-year-old District man guilty of two counts of bias related assault against a gay male couple on Aug.
3 after seeing the men holding hands outside the 9:30 Club in the Shaw neighborhood. Court records show the jury also found the attacker, Franklin Siate, guilty of the offense of attempted threats against a female employee of the 9:30 Club after the woman and witnesses said he threatened to rape and murder her a short time before he targeted the two gay men.
Superior Court Judge Jennifer Di Toro, who presided over Siate’s trial, scheduled a sentencing hearing for Feb. 10. Under D.C.’s hate crimes law, the judge has the authority to hand down a sentence one and a half times greater than the maximum sentence for the underlying charge of assault to which he was convicted in connection with the attack against the two gay men.
Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia who serves as the city’s chief prosecutor, referred to Siate’s conviction and his office’s efforts to prosecute hate crimes at a Dec.
