US: White Man Pleads Guilty to Terrorism, Black Man's Murder

A white U.S. Army specialist, James Jackson, has plead guilty to terrorism with the intention of sparking a race war through the 2017 murder of a Black man with a sword, prosecutors said Wednesday,

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On March 21, 2017, Jackson, 30, walked into the New York City police department and surrendered to investigators for the stabbing and death of 66-year-old Black man, Timothy Caughman.

Jackson, a Maryland native and Army veteran, told Manhattan Judge Laura Ward he travelled to New York, armed with two knives and a sword to stage his racist hunt because it’s prestige in the media world.

The defendant pleaded guilty to six counts, including a hate crime and murder, and faces life in prison without parole on his final court hearing on Feb. 13.

“This was more than a murder case. This was a type of cruelty that needs to be treated with the most serious of our laws,” said District Attorney Cyrus Vance, calling the conviction a landmark ruling for New York.

Caughman was a  “gentleman” and a “good neighbor” and was collecting bottles for recycling when he was attacked. The 66 year old was meant to be a “practice run” to deter interracial relationships, Jackson told the Daily News in 2017.

He told reporters he would’ve preferred killing a “young thug” or "a successful older black man with blondes ... people you see in Midtown. These younger guys that put white girls on the wrong path."

Caughman’s murder was “a call to arms,” Jackson told detectives in 2017, saying he hoped Congress would consider a “global policy aimed at the complete extermination of the Negro race," the district attorney’s office.

Outside the courthouse, Vance said, “There is no place in our city or our society for terrorists – ‘domestic’ or otherwise. If you come here to kill New Yorkers in the name of white nationalism, you will be investigated, prosecuted and incapacitated like the terrorist that you are.”