Two Men Get 15 Years in Prison for Torturing Gay Black Man

Two Texas men were each sentenced to 15 years in federal prison Wednesday after being convicted of brutal hate crimes against a gay African-American man in Corpus Christi, TX.

Ramiro Serrata Jr., 23, and Jimmy Garza, 33, both pleaded guilty in 2015 to one count of conspiracy to commit hate crimes and one count of a hate crime violation of the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crime Act.

The men lured the gay African-American man to an apartment in 2012 and tortured him for three hours.

According to prosecutors, the duo punched and kicked the man and assaulted him with a frying pan, mug, broom, belt and battery-filled sock. They poured bleach in his eyes, sodomized him with a broom handle and struck him in the head with a gun.

In a statement, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said the sentencing “makes clear that assaults based on bias and hate will not be tolerated in this nation. These crimes violate both our civil rights laws and most basic national value.”