A South Carolina man was sentenced to serve ten years behind prison walls to stew on his racially-motivated murder attempt gone wrong.
Brandon Cory Lecroy, 26, was sentenced to a decade in jail on Thursday following his arrest last year for contacting a local branch of the Ku Klux Klan and inquiring about hiring a hitman to lynch his Black neighbor, according to The State.
An agent from a domestic terrorism task force posed as a hitman and contacted Lecroy; informing him that he could get the job done for $500 bucks. Lecroy then him sent photos of his neighbor, described as “FJ” and made it clear that he wanted to “hang his neighbor from a tree” and place a “flaming cross” in the man’s yard, The Post and Courier reported. He also requested an untraceable gun and noted that he had others he wanted to dispose of once the job was done.
READ MORE: Mississippi judge says Trump attacks on courts akin to KKK tactics
When Lecroy and the agent met, he handed over a $100 down payment and was immediately arrested. He was indicted on charges of “solicitation to commit a crime of violence and use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder for hire,” AOL writes.
During his sentencing last week, Lecroy’s public defender argued for leniency, claiming that he was simply trying put an end to a trespassing neighbor who was constantly inciting violence.
“Brandon called the KKK because who else was he going to call?” Attorney Erica Soderdahl said. “It had nothing to do with the color of his skin.”
Prosecutors, however, disagreed, and they presented receipts in the form of secretly-recorded tapes by law enforcement which revealed LeRoy’s racist rhetoric and ideology.
READ MORE: Karma is a beast: George Zimmerman says he’s broke and needs a public defender
“It’s one thing to think these thoughts, but it’s a crime to undertake to do harm to another,” said U.S. Judge Bruce Howe Hendricks before passing sentence on Lecroy’s sentence.