Man jailed for hot water attack on gays
ATLANTA: As he waited for a pot of water to boil, Martin Blackwell had plenty of time to change his mind. But instead, he went ahead with what a judge in Georgia said was a “soulless” decision to throw the scalding water over two gay men sleeping on a mattress, burning them so severely that one was put into an induced coma at the hospital and both required skin grafts.
Noting the minutes Blackwell waited for the water to boil, the Superior Court judge, Henry Newkirk, told him: “You had so many outs where the voice of reason could have taken over.”
On Wednesday, a jury in Fulton County, Georgia, found Blackwell guilty of multiple counts of assault and battery for dousing the men in February. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison, the maximum allowed under state law, Dontaye Carter, a spokesman with the district attorney’s office, said on Thursday.
In February, the two men, Marquez Tolbert, 21, and his boyfriend, Anthony Gooden, 24, were in bed together in the apartment of Mr Gooden’s mother in College Park, Georgia, when Blackwell walked into the room. Mr Gooden’s mother was Blackwell’s girlfriend, whom he often stayed with.
Mr Tolbert told a local television station in March that he woke up to Blackwell, 48, a long-distance lorry driver, pouring the scalding water on them.
“Once the water hit, I smacked the wall and then shot out of bed,” Mr Tolbert said. He said Blackwell told them: “Get out of my house with all that gay sh*t.”
A police report said Blackwell told investigators he had doused the men with the water about 9pm because he wanted to stop them from sleeping together.
“They’ll be all right,” he told investigators. “It was just a little hot water on them.”
Mr Tolbert said he spent 10 days in the hospital, undergoing skin grafts for burns on his back, arms and neck. Mr Gooden, who was also severely burned, received a month of treatment for his injuries, during which he had to be put into an induced coma.
Franklin Engram, the assistant district attorney, said in an interview Blackwell had told officers just before his arrest that the two men were “hollering” and “moaning” and were “stuck together like two hot dogs”.
Georgia is one of the few states that do not have a specific law governing hate crimes, so Blackwell was not charged with such a crime.
An FBI spokesman, Kevin Rowson, said on Thursday that the agency was not pursuing a hate-crime investigation.
“We are aware of it, we have looked at it, but the bottom line is he is getting 40 years,” Mr Rowson said. “At this point, we are not pursuing it.”
But officials at the district attorney’s office said on Thursday they recognised the impact the Blackwell case could have in setting a precedent in the handling of such crimes, where there was no provocation and the suspect’s motives for inflicting serious injury involved bias.
“Clearly, a case like this does get a tag as a special case on a high-profile list, where it is such a heinous crime,” Fani Willis, the Fulton County deputy district attorney, said in a telephone interview on Thursday.
Monique Walker, the public defender for Blackwell, told the court her client had merely been reckless.
“It’s not about hate,” she told the jury. “It’s about old-school culture, old-school thinking.” Ms Walker could not be immediately reached for comment.