In the days since Jason Eaton was arrested and charged with attempted second-degree murder for the non-fatal shooting of three young Palestinian American men in Burlington last Saturday, local and national faith and political leaders have called for prosecutors to pursue a hate crime enhancement in the case.
Thanks to a 2021 amendment made to Vermont’s hate crime statute, some say that convicting Eaton of a hate crime — should authorities find evidence for and pursue such a charge — could be easier than in years past.
“It was a relatively simple change that we made, but it was a very powerful change,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central.
The statute previously required prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was “maliciously” motivated by a person’s identity, such as race, religion or gender, among other protected categories.
“And ‘maliciously’ turned out to be the death knell for a lot of these prosecutions,” Baruth said, “because it asks you to look into the mind of the criminal and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they were motivated maliciously.”
So lawmakers made a significant one-word change, at the suggestion of state prosecutors at the time: They removed the word “maliciously” from the statute, lowering the burden of proof to convict a suspect of a hate crime-enhanced sentence.
Lawmakers also stipulated in the rewritten law that a crime does not have to solely be motivated by prejudice. Instead, it can be motivated “in whole or in part” by a victim’s actual or perceived identity.
As of Thursday, Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George had not pursued a hate crime enhancement against Eaton — which remains a high bar, given that she would have to prove the defendant’s motivation.
But at a Monday press conference following his arraignment, she told reporters, “Although we do not yet have evidence to support a hate crime enhancement, I do want to be clear that there is no question this was a hateful act.”
George did not respond to VTDigger’s request for comment Thursday.
According to affidavits compiled by the Burlington Police Department, the three young college students who were shot — Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Aliahmad — were walking on Burlington’s Prospect Street on Saturday night, speaking a mix of Arabic and English, when Eaton allegedly approached them from a porch without saying anything and opened fire, striking all three. Awartani and Aliahmad told police they were wearing keffiyehs, traditional scarves that have become a symbol of Palestinian identity.
The subsequent shock has reverberated in Vermont and around the country among those who saw it as a potential stateside manifestation of animosity exacerbated by the Israel-Hamas War.
Eaton, 48, pleaded not guilty on Monday to the charges against him in Chittenden County Superior criminal court in Burlington. His possible motives were not discussed during the arraignment, and at the follow-up press conference, law enforcement and prosecutors told reporters that they were still gathering evidence — including a computer, from which they could investigate Eaton’s cyber activity.
Asked if police had uncovered evidence that Eaton was motivated by hate, Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad told reporters Monday, “We are working hard on making these kinds of determinations.”
Murad went on to cite similar investigations of suspected hate crimes in which law enforcement officers were able to determine hateful motives based on interviews with acquaintances of suspects, as well as computer activity evidence.
“We know that in other instances, in other places, there have been writings, for example, there have been things that people have left on social media … and things online, that have given us the opportunity to, to impute motive,” Murad said Monday. “We do not currently have that and what we do have we’re not yet prepared to discuss at this stage of the investigation.”
Federal law enforcement officials said they were also investigating the incident and could potentially bring federal hate crime charges.
To prove in state court that a perpetrator was motivated by hate can have a direct impact on the perpetrator’s conviction — namely, it can extend the length of their jail sentence, noted Falko Schilling, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont. But bringing a hate crime enhancement also carries symbolic weight, said Schilling, who was involved in the Legislature’s deliberations when they amended the state hate crime law in 2021.
“I think it’s really important for a number of the folks in the communities that are directly impacted by this type of violence to be able to send a message that this is the type of behavior we do not accept as a society,” he said. “All crime is horrible. We want to prevent all of it. But the impacts of this type of hate-motivated crime, where we target people based on their identities, is something we especially want to protect against and send a message to folks that this is unacceptable.”
