Home / Full timeline / An all-White jury sentences an admitted white supremacist to ten years probation for the June 1991, drive-by shooting of a Black man, Donald Thomas.
An all-White jury sentences an admitted white supremacist to ten years probation for the June 1991, drive-by shooting of a Black man, Donald Thomas.
1993 (Mar 23)
In Fort Worth, Texas, an all-White jury sentenced an admitted white supremacist to ten years probation for the June 1991, drive-by shooting of a Black man, Donald Thomas. Thomas was sitting in his pickup truck talking with some white neighbors when he was killed by shots fired from a car in which an eighteen-year-old white skinhead named Christopher W. Brosky was riding. During Brosky's trial, it was revealed that he had helped plan the shotgun slaying of the thirty-two-year-old Thomas. Two seventeen-year-olds who were also involved, indudmg the alleged triggerman, pleaded guilty and received prison terms. Brosky himself could have received life in prison for his part in the crime. But according to some jurors, his exceptionally light sentence came about as a result of a poorly worded note to the judge. What they had meant to recommend was that he serve five years in jail and then be put on probation for ten years. Instead, what they wrote was interpreted to mean only ten years' probation and no jail time. The decision infuriated local Blacks and sent thousands into the streets on March 28 to participate in what they called a "silent death march." A crowd estimated at more than five thousand people assembled in downtown Fort Worth and walked peacefully to the county courthouse, where they held a rally calling for justice for Black American victims of crime.
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.