Immigrant Beating Ruled Hate Crime

A New York man has been convicted of a hate crime for beating an Ecuadorian immigrant to death because he thought the victim was gay, according to CBS News.

Keith Phoenix was found guilty in a Brooklyn court Monday in the fatal 2008 beating of Jose Sucuzhanay. Phoenix and a friend assaulted Sucuzhanay after mistaking him and his brother, Romel Sucuzhanay, as a couple.

When Phoenix and Keith Scott saw the Sucuzhanay brothers huddled together as they walked home from a party, they assumed the men were gay. Phoenix and Scott yelled antigay and anti-Hispanic insults from their vehicle, pulled off of the road, and attacked the the two brothers.

Phoenix hit Jose Sucuzhanay in the head with an aluminum bat, causing fatal injuries.

Phoenix will be sentenced in August and faces 25 years to life in prison. In May a court convicted Scott of manslaughter, without a hate crime conviction. Scott faces up to 25 years in prison.