Federal prosecutors in Sacramento are once again taking on what they describe as a particularly flagrant hate crime.
An indictment returned Jan. 16 by a grand jury and unsealed last week accuses three Yuba County men of an unprovoked attack on a couple because the man is white and the woman is black.
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Hate crimes have been a priority of U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner going back to his days as a line prosecutor who handled a number of them and who was the office's hate-crimes coordinator.
Hate crimes, Wagner said Monday, "are intended to send a message of intolerance and instill fear in a larger community. Consequently, it is important that they be aggressively prosecuted and people in the community see that something is being done."
As to the Yuba County case, Wagner said, "In our view this is a pretty egregious incident, and the district attorney up there agreed that a federal prosecution may have a greater impact.