White supremacist James Jackson pleads guilty to killing black man with sword to start ‘race war’

Army veteran who stabbed elderly man says he planned larger attack in Times Square

He hated black men. He wanted to kill one, and he did.

In a videotaped confession, James Harris Jackson, a white Army veteran from Baltimore, told investigators that he spent several days two years ago stalking black men in Manhattan before he spotted a 66-year-old man sifting through rubbish for recyclables.

And in an undeniable testament of his hate, Jackson said he pulled a short sword from his coat and repeatedly stabbed the man, Timothy Caughman.

The killing, Jackson said, was “practice” for a larger attack he had planned for Times Square, where he intended to murder young black men who were with white women because he loathed interracial dating.

Jackson, 30, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to rare state charges of murder as terrorism and murder as a hate crime, accepting what is certain to be a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

His dramatic plea to all counts against him came four months after the video of his interview with police was presented at a pre-trial hearing in the state Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Jackson, who walked into the courtroom on crutches, wearing black slack trousers and a white button-up shirt, made no speech and expressed no remorse.

He answered a series of questions from Justice Laura A Ward in a matter-of-fact tone. The judge asked him if he had stabbed Mr Caughman because he was black and hoped the attack would incite “a racial war".

“Yes,” he said.

The murder of Mr Caughman came at a time when hate crimes were rising throughout the country and in New York City. While New York has continued to be one of the safest big cities in the country, the number of reported hate crimes increased by 5 per cent last year.

Prosecutors in Manhattan say the number of cases in the borough has increased steadily since the 2016 election of President Donald Trump, whose rhetoric is often divisive.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R Vance Jr said Jackson’s conviction was the first of a white supremacist on terrorism charges in New York, and one of several in the country. Mr Vance had intended to try the case himself.

“This is an incredibly disturbed young man and he brought tragedy to Manhattan, and he certainly showed Mr Caughman no mercy, and I don’t think this office should show him any,” Mr Vance said during an interview at his office.

“It was a cruel and completely planned attack with a broader political goal.”

James Harris Jackson, who pleaded guilty to traveling to New York City and fatally stabbing an African-American man in an racially motivated attack (Reuters) (REUTERS)

A family friend and a cousin of Mr Caughman looked on as Jackson entered his guilty plea.

“The pain is still there,” said Mr Caughman’s long-time friend, Portia Clark, 66. “I’m grateful he pleaded guilty to all of the charges and they can take him back and throw the key away.”

Ms Clark, standing outside the courtroom, addressed Jackson: “And no – I don’t forgive you for what you did.”

On St Patrick’s Day in 2017, Jackson boarded a bus in Washington, DC, and rode it to New York City. He said he thought about going to another city, but settled on New York because he believed his attack would receive the most media attention there: “I wanted to basically influence the national conversation.” he said.

“I was planning on doing basically as many as I could in Times Square,” he told detectives during a two-hour interview after his arrest. He said he had planned to send an email to The New York Times or CNN to explain the motive behind his “terrorist attack” or what he described as “an amateurish, slipshod version” of one.

After arriving in the city, Jackson checked into a hotel on West 46th Street. He spent three days hunting victims with a short sword and two smaller knives tucked into his coat.

Then, at about 11.15 pm on 20 March, Jackson spotted Mr Caughman rummaging through rubbish on West 36th Street near Ninth Avenue. Mr Caughman was a recycler who lived nearby in a room at the Barbour Hotel, which now houses formerly homeless people transitioning to permanent housing. (In earlier reports about the murder, Mr Caughman was inaccurately described as homeless.)

Jackson told investigators he stabbed Mr Caughman in the back. Mr Vance said the sword struck several of Mr Caughman’s organs, causing him to bleed out. Mr Caughman screamed and asked Jackson: “What are you doing?”

Jackson responded by stabbing Mr Caughman several more times in the chest before fleeing. He broke the tip of his sword during the attack and tossed it in a rubbish bin in Washington Square Park.

Bleeding, Mr Caughman walked a block to a police station on West 35th Street, where officers called an ambulance, police said. He died at Bellevue Hospital.

Soon Jackson’s image from security cameras appeared in news reports. A day after the attack, Jackson turned himself in at a police substation in Times Square.

During his interview with detectives, Jackson said he intended the murder of Mr Caughman to be a “declaration of global war on the Negro race”, and that he wanted to “inspire white men to kill black men, to scare black men and to provoke a race war".

He told a detective that he felt no remorse. He said his goal was “a global policy aimed at the complete extermination of the Negro race".

“I was going for something a bit bigger,” he said.

The New York Times