Man Convicted of Murder for Hate Crime

"As long as she had blond hair and blue eyes, she had to die,"- Grant

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

WHITE PLAINS, July 11 — A homeless sex offender was convicted of murder as a hate crime on Tuesday in the stabbing death of a white woman near a downtown mall here last summer. He had told the police that he killed her because he wanted to start a race war.

After four hours of deliberations over two days, a jury in State Supreme Court found the defendant, Phillip Grant, 44, who is black, guilty of a racially motivated killing, which took place on June 29, 2005, at lunchtime in a parking garage near the Galleria mall.
The killing near the busy mall stunned people for its savagery and cast a harsh light on the way Westchester County dealt with its homeless population.

Mr. Grant was one of several high-level sex offenders who spent their nights sleeping at a county-run homeless shelter and their days roaming White Plains. The victim, Concetta Russo-Carriero, 56, a petite woman with green eyes and sandy blond hair, was stabbed as she walked through the garage on her way to her car.

About 2 p.m. in a packed courtroom in the Westchester County Courthouse, the jurors deciding Mr. Grant’s fate — seven white men, four white women and one black woman — filed into the courtroom. None looked at the defendant.

Stocky and expressionless, Mr. Grant showed no emotion as the verdict was read. But he turned toward one of his lawyers and whispered something afterward.
As he was handcuffed and led out of the courtroom, Mr. Grant kept his head down and did not look at the gallery, where dozens of Ms. Russo-Carriero’s relatives and former colleagues filled four rows of benches.

The jurors refused to speak with reporters as the courtroom emptied. They said nothing when approached by the victim’s relatives and walked quickly away from the courthouse.
After the verdict, Ms. Russo-Carriero’s parents and two grown sons spoke at a news conference, using language like “beast,” “savage” and “vicious” to describe Mr. Grant.

“When that animal stuck a knife in my daughter’s heart,” said the victim’s father, Ted Granata, 83, as he sobbed and turned red with grief, “he stuck it in our hearts too.”

Ms. Russo-Carriero’s eldest son, Jonathan Russo, 29, choked back anger as he spoke.
“My mother was leaving work and did not deserve to come upon such a vicious animal as Phillip Grant, a remorseless human being,” he said. “He murdered my mother for no other reason than that she is white.”

Mr. Grant faces 20 years to life in state prison at his sentencing, scheduled for Sept. 11. As a hate crime, the murder charge carries the same maximum sentence but a higher minimum one.
But legal experts say it is almost certain that Mr. Grant will never be released if the State Legislature adopts a civil commitment measure, known as Connie’s law, for the victim’s nickname, that would keep the most violent sex offenders locked in institutions even after their time is served.

A bill that would create the measure is being considered in the State Assembly.
Mr. Grant was a felon with a history of violent rapes when he began staying in a county-run shelter at the Westchester County Airport in 2003. Every morning at 6 a.m., he was put on a bus to White Plains with other shelter residents. But after the killing, the county faced such fierce criticism that it ended the busing and hired trained monitors to shadow the most dangerous sex offenders staying in its shelters.
The victim’s family sued the county and the City of White Plains in September, accusing them of negligence. The suit is pending.

The hate crime charge against Mr. Grant stemmed from statements he made in a rambling, 45-minute confession videotaped by detectives. On the tape, which was played in court, Mr. Grant said he suffered from depression and anxiety and was desperate for medication.
Paranoid that a group of white men were following him and plotting against him, he shoplifted a steak knife, hid on the top floor of the garage and waited for hours, he said, until he spotted a white person.

Ms. Russo-Carriero, a paralegal from White Plains, was found lying in a pool of blood by a passer-by about 1 p.m.; she had two stab wounds to her chest.
“I said to myself, ‘The first person that I see in this mall that looks white, I’m killing,’ ” Mr. Grant told his interrogators. “I had never seen this woman before and I didn’t care. All I knew was she had blond hair and blue eyes and she had to die.”

But Mr. Grant’s lead defense lawyer, Eugene Traynor, insisted throughout the trial that Mr. Grant had made a false confession because he was mentally ill and had been pressured by detectives. He argued vociferously that Mr. Grant had not been read his Miranda rights and suggested in his closing argument that Mr. Grant had been roughed up.
“This defendant did not get the treatment you would expect to get from police,” he said. “He got the homeless black guy treatment.”

Prosecutors pointed to strong DNA evidence, including drops of the victim’s blood that were found on Mr. Grant’s trousers and under his fingernails.

After the verdict, Mr. Traynor said he would appeal, citing “procedural issues” with the case, including pretrial publicity and his insistence that Mr. Grant’s confession was unconstitutionally obtained. Throughout the case, he fought to have the confession thrown out and repeatedly demanded that Judge Lester B. Adler call a mistrial, prompting the judge to lose his patience on Monday.

“One thing I know about this defense strategy is that it is to delay, obfuscate, throw this jury off and cause as much disruption as possible,” Judge Adler said.