A 62-year-old white man convicted of attempting to run down six Black men at the site of the Rosewood massacre has been sentenced to a single year in prison.
David Allen Emanuel appeared solemn and reserved on Thursday as federal Judge Allen Winsor delivered the sentence on six counts of hate crimes for attempting to run over Historian Marvin Dunn, his son and four other Black men who were surveying Dunn’s Rosewood property to build a memorial for the massacre.
The judge’s sentence called for 12 months plus one day in federal prison for each of the six charges, which he allowed to run concurrently. The Justice Department had sought a “substantial” prison term of between five and six years.
You may be right. Nobody knows. Plenty of people come out with a harder heart than when they went in but not all. That’s the biggest failure of our justice system. It’s sort of a unique situation when the victims are advocating for the perpetrator of a hate crime. I feel like if this guy has a shot at changing then this is it. And if someone this bad can be changed then there’s hope for others too. I hope it works out.