Features

White supremacist to plead guilty to hate-crime shootings

The Associated Press
Wednesday January 24, 2001

LOS ANGELES — White supremacist Buford O. Furrow Jr., who admitted to fatally shooting a Filipino-American postman and shooting up a Jewish community center filled with children, has agreed to plead guilty to federal hate-crime charges, a U.S. Attorney spokesman said. 

“Buford Furrow is expected to be in court tomorrow morning to plead guilty,” Thom Mrozek said Tuesday night. 

He declined to discuss details of the plea agreement because it had not been filed yet with the court.  

But sources close to the case said Furrow will plead to all 16 counts of the indictment against him. 

The sources said Furrow has agreed to spend the rest of his life in prison without possibility of parole as part of his plea bargain with the government. 

Prosecutors had said they were going to seek the death penalty against Furrow if he went to trial. His public defenders had been negotiating to save his life and depicted him as psychotic. 

They were prepared to mount a mental-illness defense if the government insisted on going to trial.  

Furrow had a history of hospitalizations for mental problems. 

Furrow was charged with killing letter carrier Joseph Ileto on Aug. 10, 1999, hours after he allegedly wounded three boys, a teen-age girl and a woman at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in the San Fernando Valley. 

In pretrial legal filings, prosecutors detailed statements by Furrow in which he admitted his actions and said they were motivated by racial hatred. 

In spite of his statements admitting responsibility, Furrow pleaded innocent.  

His public defenders argued that the federal death penalty statute was unconstitutional and that the factors presented to justify it in Furrow’s case were too vague.