Former Hotel Security Guard Pleads Guilty to Defacing Torah Scroll
A former hotel security guard pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights charge for defacing a Jewish school’s Torah scroll and prayer books.
Justin Baker, 25, of Jackson, Tenn., pleaded guilty Monday to civil rights intimidation for violating the civil rights of students of the Margolin Hebrew Academy’s Cooper Yeshiva High School of Memphis, as well as felony vandalism.
Baker will be sentenced on Dec. 30 in Madison County Circuit Court. He faces two to four years for civil rights intimidation and two to four years for vandalism over $10,000, according to the Jackson Sun.
He was arrested in January after the school’s students and faculty discovered the scroll and prayer books damaged and covered with graffiti as they entered a conference room at the DoubleTree Hotel in Jackson for Sabbath services. The graffiti included “Gentiles win, Jews lose” and “Submit to Satan.”
Approximately 50 students and faculty from the school were spending Shabbat at the motel on their way to a ski trip in the Smoky Mountains.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
