Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke Delivers Remarks on 15th Anniversary of the Enactment of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

OPENING REMARKS

Good afternoon. My name is Kristen Clarke, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department. I am honored and proud to be with you for this important commemoration of the landmark Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, one of our most powerful tools in our efforts to combat violent bias-motivated hate crimes in America today.

Before I begin, I want to acknowledge that for many people, anxiety levels are high right now. This is an uncertain time, and we might reasonably wonder what kind of rhetoric will soon dominate our country, and what kind of conduct that rhetoric might foster. In the last week, we have seen HBCU students and high school students targeted with racist texts. My hope is that the Justice Department's firm commitment to confronting hate can offer both reassurance and motivation.

Today we hold space together to honor the memories of people harmed or killed by bias-motivated violence. We affirm that their lives mattered. We also acknowledge the work we and our partners have done to bring justice to the people who caused that harm. And we look toward a future in which we prevent such crimes and in which we continue to hold perpetrators accountable.

Recent statistics from the FBI tell us in no uncertain terms that hate crimes persist and are rising. We need only read the news to confirm this:

• Nonprofit employees receiving death threats and verbal abuse because they were members of the Sikh faith.
• Property destroyed at a university center because it served Islamic students.
• Buildings set on fire, shot at, attacked, damaged or destroyed because they were Jehovah's Witness Halls.
• People followed home from a grocery store or restaurant or gas station, robbed at gunpoint or carjacked because they were Hispanic.

While I could provide countless examples, I want to take a moment to honor the memory of the two men whose tragic deaths led to the law we commemorate today.

Matthew Shephard was a 21-year-old gay university student who loved fishing, horses and theater. James Byrd Jr. was a 49-year-old Black man, a people-person who loved music and his family. Tragically, both men met gruesome, hate-motivated deaths in 1998, solely on the basis of their background and identities.

As you know, those deaths, followed by courageous and tireless effort from their family members, led to the adoption of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a law that Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has called the Justice Department's "most effective statute for hate crime prosecution."

The act changed history. It gave us greater capacity to defend members of vulnerable communities from violence. It expanded the range of identities we protect. It lifted restrictions on the circumstances surrounding prosecutable crimes. And it directs critical funding and technical assistance to state and local law enforcement. In other words, this is a law that has helped to send a strong message about our principles and values as a nation - a nation that stands for diversity and inclusion of all people and rejects hate, exclusion and vitriol.

This crucial law would not exist without Matthew's and James' family members. We are indebted to these family members and their decade-long fight to bring about the act - as well as for their continued involvement. We will hear from Matthew Shepard's parents shortly. James' family, who also contributed invaluable advocacy, is represented by sister Louvon Byrd-Harris who has provided recorded remarks.

At the Justice Department, we firmly enforce the Shepard-Byrd Act. Since January 2021, we have charged more than 150 hate-crime defendants in more than 135 cases, obtaining more than 125 convictions. But our work goes beyond prosecution.

We have improved reporting, provided training and testimony, investigated and prosecuted criminal acts of hate and educated the public and law enforcement. With our United Against Hate initiative, every U.S. Attorneys' Office takes action to build and strengthen ties between communities and law enforcement. We're fortunate to have several U.S. Attorneys with us here today: Dena King for the Western District of North Carolina, Philip Sellinger for the District of New Jersey, and Matthew Graves for the District of Columbia.

These proactive measures, along with everything Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer mentioned earlier, yield real results, but so far, of course, they haven't outright eliminated bias-fueled lawlessness. That's why we use every tool at our disposal in seeking out justice for victims and families.

Our work includes the prosecution of defendants responsible for an alarmingly high number of hate-fueled mass shootings that we have seen in recent years, including charges against the man responsible for the tragic mass killings of 10 Black people in Buffalo, New York; prosecution of the man responsible for killing 23 and wounding 22 Latinos at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas; prosecution of the man responsible for the murder of 11 at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; prosecution of the person responsible for murdering five, wounding 19, and attempting to kill 26 others at Club Q, an LGBTQI+ establishment in Colorado Springs, Colorado and much more.

We are also increasingly aware of the transnational dimensions of hate, amplified by the weaponization of social media and digital messaging platforms. Just two months ago, a federal grand jury in California charged two leaders of a transnational terrorist group called the Terrorgram Collective on 15 criminal counts. Our indictment alleged that defendants solicited others to engage in hate crimes and terrorist attacks against Black, immigrant, LGBT and Jewish people, and more. The defendants' alleged goal was to ignite a race war, "accelerate" the collapse of what they viewed as an irreparably corrupt government and bring about a white ethnostate. They used the internet platform Telegram to post messages promoting their white supremacist "accelerationism." Our work here makes clear the new technological face of white supremacist violence - as those seeking mass violence expand their online reach to encourage, solicit and facilitate terrorist activities. But as technology evolves, we keep up.

But today we will focus on the ways in which hate crimes disrupt society and destroy lives.

In a South Carolina case you will hear more about today, a jury convicted the man who murdered Dime Doe, a Black transgender woman, of a hate crime. He received a life sentence.

In Virginia, a man was charged with a hate crime for attempting to kill congregants at a church.

In Kansas, a man received an 80-month sentence for making death threats against a person he believed was in an interracial relationship and for threatening two young Black men at a gas station.

Hate mongers fueled with racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, anti-LGBTQI or xenophobic motivations have no place in America today. Rest assured, we will keep moving towards an inclusive and more peaceful America while holding accountable those responsible for senseless, vile and hate-filled crimes.

Hate crimes are message crimes. Their perpetrators understand that such violence touches many more people than their individual victims. It instills fear in communities, and it sows trauma in the hearts and bodies of the loved ones left behind.

We listen to and we hear the survivors of hate crimes. We center their experiences and we acknowledge their trauma in our work. Today, we'll hear from some of them, and from those who work every day to preserve others from the kind of pain they experience.

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