Some peace for Ileto family
By Linda Deutsch/AP
White supremacist Buford O. Furrow, Jr. pleaded guilty on Jan. 24 to murder and hate crime charges for killing Filipino American mail carrier Joseph Ileto and wounding five others at a Jewish community center full of children. The plea bargain spares him the death penalty.
Furrow pleaded guilty to 16 federal counts stemming from the Aug. 10, 1999, rampage across the San Fernando Valley.
He answered, “Guilty, your honor,” 16 times as U.S. District Judge Nora Manella asked if he had committed the crimes.
Furrow, 39, was charged with killing Ileto hours after he allegedly wounded three boys, a teen-age girl and a woman at the North Valley Jewish Community Center.
The Ileto family occupied a back row of the courtroom, listening quietly to the plea, which they had agreed to in advance.
He allegedly sprayed the community center with more than 70 rounds before fleeing to the west San Fernando Valley, where authorities say he shot Ileto nine times as the postman was delivering mail.
Furrow surrendered in Las Vegas the day after the shooting.
Authorities said he told them afterward that he shot up the community center because he wanted to send a “wake-up call to America to kill Jews.” He shot Ileto because the man “appeared to him” to be Hispanic or Asian.
Manella told Furrow that by agreeing to plead guilty he was also agreeing to spend the rest of his natural life in prison. He said he understood.
Furrow, handcuffed and shackled, was thin, clean-shaven and almost completely bald — a far cry from the pudgy, mustachioed man initially arrested. His manner was docile and soft-spoken, in contrast to his truculent demeanor when he was first brought to court.
After a prosecutor outlined the details of the crimes and the judge repeatedly asked Furrow if he understood, she declared: “I find the pleas to be freely and knowingly made. The pleas in this case are accepted.”
She set March 26 for his sentencing.
Justice Department civil rights attorney Bobbi Bernstein said the government was not conceding that Furrow suffered from insanity at the time of his crimes.
“He was not insane or suffering from any condition that prevented him from forming [the intent] for the crimes,” she said.
Furrow has a history of hospitalization for mental problems, and his lawyers had said they planned to make his mental condition an issue at trial.
Furrow, of Olympia, Wash., had a long history of involvement with anti-Semitic hate groups operating in the Pacific Northwest, among them the Aryan Nations.
The government had said earlier it would seek the death penalty, but if jurors had convicted him on all counts and rejected death, he could have been sentenced to two life terms plus 110 years, and $3.75 million in fines, as well as restitution to the victims.
The judge said to Furrow: “Are you pleading guilty here because you are in fact guilty?”
“Yes, your honor,” he said.
Furrow’s public defenders issued a brief statement after the plea: “The crimes committed by our client ... were tragic in their consequence to many, many people ... Together with the government’s lawyers, we believe this is the appropriate resolution to this case.” |
