Recent hate crimes in Cape Girardeau

Missouri laws describe a hate crime as one which is "knowingly motivated" because of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation or disability of the victim. Violations are a class D felony. Prosecutors say such cases in Cape Girardeau County are rare. Here are some recent examples of local hate crime cases.

* April 11, 2011: A gay Cape Girardeau couple arrive home just after 10 p.m. to find an anti-gay slur painted on their front door and on the brick wall on the outside of their apartment on North Middle Street. Cape Girardeau police found no suspects, though hate-crime charges would have applied in the case.

* Jan. 1, 2011: Frank and Sylvia Ellis, a black couple from Cape Girardeau, awake on New Year's Day to find the N-word and other racially charged obscenities scratched across their Dodge Durango. Black spray paint had been used on their garage door and on a glass door in the back of their home. The neighbor, Darrell J. Nice, who later confessed, was charged with a hate crime that landed him a five-year prison sentence -- the maximum would have been four without the hate crime label -- that was suspended to probation. The Ellises are still trying to recoup some of their financial losses from Nice, estimated in the thousands, in civil court with a hearing scheduled for Thursday before Judge Scott Lipke.

* May 7, 2010: Two Cape Girardeau brothers are charged with a hate crime for allegedly assaulting a black man at a convenience store on North Kingshighway. The victim, Lennie Dickerson, originally tells police that Jerry D. Conrad and Timothy R. Conrad yelled racial slurs at him before assaulting him. But at the preliminary hearing, Dickerson recanted, saying that the men had not used the slurs and that only Timothy Conrad had assaulted him. Charges against Jerry Conrad were dismissed, and Timothy Conrad pleaded guilty to third-degree assault and was sentenced to probation -- with the hate crime charge. In an unrelated incident, Jerry Conrad is later killed outside a Cape Girardeau nightclub.

* June 1, 2009: A Cape Girardeau man is charged with a hate crime for vandalizing the Islamic Center and a car parked near it. Nicholas T. Proffit, then 31, is charged with two counts of felony property damage under Missouri's hate crime law, along with misdemeanor offenses for driving while intoxicated, speeding and failing to wear a seat belt. The large glass window on the south side of the mosque was broken out and the windshield of a Mercedes-Benz parked in the lot was also cracked. He is later sentenced to three years in prison.

* Nov. 7, 2008: A victim's sexual orientation is cited as the reason hate crime charges are filed against two Cape Girardeau men. Shaun J. Cole and Eric L. Frymire are charged with third-degree assault and with hate crimes after what police described as a verbal assault in a parking lot on Whitener Street. The two men allegedly followed the victim and the group that included the victim to one of the apartments in the lot. They then threatened them and hurled derogatory sexual remarks at them, police said. The men forced the apartment door open, called the victim a name and hit him in the head, according to sworn statements taken at the time. What normally would have been misdemeanor charges were bumped up to a class D felony. Both were sentenced to probation for second-degree assault charges.

* Sept. 3, 2006: A high school senior is attacked by two Cape Girardeau teenagers, one of whom police said hit the victim with his own prosthetic leg. The victim was standing in a parking lot when a car pulled up with two teens inside, who began harassing the victim, who is missing half his right arm and wears a prosthetic leg due to a birth defect. "What's up, nubs?" one of the teens asked the victim. The victim was then attacked by the two men, who punched him several times in the face. The men were charged with a hate crime because of the victim's disability. One went through the juvenile courts, while the other, Alexander S. Harris, then 17, pleaded guilty and served six months in jail.

SOURCE: Cape Girardeau County prosecuting attorney's office, Southeast Missourian archives