(NAME-MCE) Man sentenced for racially based assault Eugene OR

[Anselmo Villanueva]

Man sentenced for racially based assault

Billy Lynn Brosowske is given nearly six years in prison after accepting a
plea deal for biting off part of a man’s ear

By Karen McCowan  The Register-Guard  Eugene OR  April 28, 2009

http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/news/cityregion/12778202-41/story.csp

A 35-year-old Eugene man will spend nearly six years in prison for biting
off the top of another man’s ear in the early morning hours of Jan. 10,
during what a Lane County grand jury charged was a racially based assault.

Billy Lynn Brosowske last week accepted a plea deal in which he admitted
second-degree and third-degree assault. He also acknowledged that the state
could have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he knowingly injured a
Puerto Rican man because of Brosowske’s perception of the victim’s race,
color or national origin, as the law requires for a hate crime.

Before his sentencing Tuesday in a jail courtroom, however, Brosowske told
Lane County Circuit Judge Debra Vogt that he bit the man’s ear in “overtly
obvious self-defense” while getting “stomped out” and choked by the victim
and “three or four other dudes.”

Brosowske said he pleaded guilty to “this alleged hate crime” because he
feared receiving a far longer prison term had he tried to fight the charges
in a trial. He told Vogt that a jury would “take one look at me and presume
I was guilty” once prosecutor Mike Pugh revealed that prison officials had
listed Brosowske as being affiliated with the “Nazi Low Rider” prison gang.

His defense attorney, Janise Augur, told Vogt that Brosowske had indeed
associated himself with that group while in prison “in order to protect
himself.” But racial discrimination was not his pattern once he’d been
released from prison, she said. She said his friends included
African-­Americans.

In fact, Brosowske told Vogt that another reason he accepted the plea deal
was because prosecutors agreed to reduce to a misdemeanor a felony assault
charge against his roommate and “best friend,” Taeza May Lowell, an
African-American who also was charged in the incident along with Michael
James Hikes and Kimberly Shannay Wills.

Hikes, 23, pleaded guilty to three counts of misdemeanor assault; Wills, 21,
pleaded guilty to two counts of misdemeanor assault; and Lowell, 41, pleaded
guilty to a single count of misdemeanor assault. All received probation and
short jail sentences.

Brosowske and Augur told Vogt that the 3:30 a.m. altercation between two
groups of four people began when a request for a cigarette turned into a
verbal dispute. He said he got involved physically when the alleged victim
knocked down the much smaller Hikes. Brosowske, a white man with a shaved
head, said the Puerto Rican was the first to use a racial epithet against
Brosowske.

“There was no hate crime,” he said.

When Vogt asked if he still wanted to accept the sentence despite that
proclamation, Brosowske replied: “With pride and integrity and horror I
accept this sentence, but my spirit remains free.”

Vogt also ordered him to pay $8,900 in restitution to the victim.