Black on White hate crime conviction July 11, 2006

A guilty verdict for the man who confessed to killing a woman because she was white.

A homeless sex offender was convicted of murder as a hate crime on Tuesday in the stabbing death of a white woman near a downtown mall here last summer. He had told the police that he killed her because he wanted to start a race war.

After four hours of deliberations over two days, a jury in State Supreme Court found the defendant, Phillip Grant, 44, who is black, guilty of a racially motivated killing, which took place on June 29, 2005, at lunchtime in a parking garage near the Galleria mall.

The killing near the busy mall stunned people for its savagery and cast a harsh light on the way Westchester County dealt with its homeless population.

Mr. Grant was one of several high-level sex offenders who spent their nights sleeping at a county-run homeless shelter and their days roaming White Plains. The victim, Concetta Russo-Carriero, 56, a petite woman with green eyes and sandy blond hair, was stabbed as she walked through the garage on her way to her car.

About 2 p.m. in a packed courtroom in the Westchester County Courthouse, the jurors deciding Mr. Grant's fate -- seven white men, four white women and one black woman -- filed into the courtroom. None looked at the defendant.

Stocky and expressionless, Mr. Grant showed no emotion as the verdict was read. But he turned toward one of his lawyers and whispered something afterward.

As he was handcuffed and led out of the courtroom, Mr. Grant kept his head down and did not look at the gallery, where dozens of Ms. Russo-Carriero's relatives and former colleagues filled four rows of benches.

The jurors refused to speak with reporters as the courtroom emptied. They said nothing when approached by the victim's relatives and walked quickly away from the courthouse.

After the verdict, Ms. Russo-Carriero's parents and two grown sons spoke at a news conference, using language like ''beast,'' ''savage'' and ''vicious'' to describe Mr. Grant.

''When that animal stuck a knife in my daughter's heart,'' said the victim's father, Ted Granata, 83, as he sobbed and turned red with grief, ''he stuck it in our hearts too.''

Ms. Russo-Carriero's eldest son, Jonathan Russo, 29, choked back anger as he spoke.

''My mother was leaving work and did not deserve to come upon such a vicious animal as Phillip Grant, a remorseless human being,'' he said. ''He murdered my mother for no other reason than that she is white.''

Mr. Grant faces 20 years to life in state prison at his sentencing, scheduled for Sept. 11. As a hate crime, the murder charge carries the same maximum sentence but a higher minimum one.