Illinois Man Pleads Guilty to Civil Rights Violation

WASHINGTON, July 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Defendant William Bowen, 25,
pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court to conspiring to violate the civil
rights of an African-American couple and their white friend by spray-painting
racial threats and epithets on the home where the three victims lived in
Collinsville, Ill., announced Grace Chung Becker, Acting Assistant Attorney
General for the Civil Rights Division, and A. Courtney Cox, U.S. Attorney for
the Southern District of Illinois. The defendant, who will be sentenced on
Oct. 31, 2008, faces a possible maximum sentence of 11 years imprisonment.

The defendant admitted that he conspired with another person to frighten and
intimidate three victims by spray-painting the victims' home with racial
threats. The defendant admitted that the purpose of the conspiracy was to
frighten and intimidate the victims because of their race, and to scare them
into moving out of the neighborhood where they lived.

Bowen's co-defendant, Joseph Brown, is scheduled to stand trial later this
month on charges of conspiracy, committing a civil rights violation and making
a false statement to a federal agent.

"The right of every individual to live peacefully in his or her own home
without being terrorized because of race is firmly protected by the laws of
the United States," said Grace Chung Becker, Acting Assistant Attorney General
for the Civil Rights Divison. "The Department of Justice will continue to
prosecute vigorously anyone who engages in this kind of criminal conduct."

This case was investigated by Special Agent Rick Crouse of the Springfield
Office of the FBI and is being prosecuted by Deputy Chief Bobbi Bernstein and
Trial Attorney Kevonne Small of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of
Justice, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Angi Scott from the U.S. Attorney's
Office for the Southern District of Illinois.

SOURCE U.S. Department of Justice

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