Federal Appeals Court upholds Concord man’s hate crime convictions

The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a Concord man’s conviction on federal hate crime charges. Marian Hudak was sentenced in 2024 to 41 months in prison and three years of supervised release.

“In Marian Hudak’s federal hate crimes trial, the central question was whether he assaulted his victims ‘because of’ their race,” Judge Harvie Wilkinson wrote for a unanimous three-judge Appeals Court panel. “The jury found that he did. It is not hard to see why: Hudak kept a number of Nazi and Ku Klux Klan objects in his home and yelled racial epithets at his victims while he attacked them.”

“On appeal, Hudak argues that the jury should have considered evidence of his mental illness and should not have considered evidence of his Nazi memorabilia,” Wilkinson continued. “We reject both arguments whole cloth. Hudak was given a fair trial. Now, he must accept the punishment for his racially motivated assaults.”

Hudak was convicted of beating his next-door neighbor, a Hispanic man, in 2021. The attack followed multiple incidents of Hudak yelling racial epithets at the neighbor and threatening to kill him, Wilkinson explained.

A “second victim” in 2022 was a black man Hudak encountered while sitting in traffic. Hudak hurled racial epithets at the man, punched his car window, and chased him to his home. Hudak threatened to shoot the man and his girlfriend, according to the 4th Circuit opinion.

During his trial, Hudak “contested that he had assaulted either man ‘because of’ the victim’s race, color, or national origin,” Wilkinson wrote. “Instead, he argued, the two incidents were the product of generalized road rage.”

“The government introduced a litany of items recovered from Hudak’s truck and house that shed light on the motive for his attacks,” the Appeals Court opinion continued. “They included a Confederate flag, a KKK flag, two Nazi flags, a swastika patch, a ring bearing the Iron Cross, and a comic book with racist caricatures of black and Hispanic people.”

“The government also presented the testimony of other people in town who had been on the receiving end of Hudak’s racial epithets,” Wilkinson wrote. “One woman testified that Hudak blasted ‘black[s] and Mexicans, you need to go back to your country’ using a speaker system attached to his truck. Another testified that Hudak yelled ‘f— you, n—–‘ when she was next to him at [a] stoplight.”

Appellate judges upheld US District Judge William Osteen’s decision to exclude evidence in the trial about Hudak’s mental health.

“Hudak’s attempt to introduce mental health evidence suffered from a more fundamental problem: his mental health was not particularly relevant to the factual question facing the jury,” Wilkinson wrote. “The jury was asked to decide whether Hudak assaulted his victims ‘because of’ their race, color, and national origin. That question is most often answered by evidence (or a lack of evidence) of racial animus, not evidence of mental illness.”

“A criminal defendant may violently attack his neighbor both because of the neighbor’s race and because the defendant suffers from a mental illness that makes it challenging for him to control his behavior,” Wilkinson added. “Indeed, the very act of violently attacking one’s neighbor suggests that the defendant is not mentally sound. In most cases short of insanity, then, mental health evidence is besides the point. As long as the defendant would not have attacked his neighbor if the neighbor were a different race, the defendant has committed the attack ‘because of’ race within the meaning of § 3631(a) and § 245(b)(2).”

“Any other approach would allow mental health defenses to swallow the hate crimes laws,” Wilkinson wrote. “Congress enacted these statutes in the 1960s ‘against a background of racial violence.’ Then, as now, much of the racial violence plaguing our country was committed by mentally disturbed people.”

“Congress intended the hate crimes laws to ‘deter and punish’ anyone ‘who would forcibly suppress the free exercise of civil rights’ of others. The hate crimes laws are thus aimed squarely at people like Hudak,” the 4th Circuit opinion continued.

Osteen had initially agreed to omit evidence of Hudak’s Nazi memorabilia from the trial. The judge changed his mind when Hudak described himself as a “military collector,” Wilkinson wrote.

“There is a difference between someone who is legitimately interested in the military history of the Civil War and World War II and someone who is motivated by the dehumanizing ideologies that those wars defeated,” the 4th Circuit opinion explained. “It is the jury’s job to determine which is which. The Nazi swastika is, like the burning of a cross, a universal ‘symbol of hate’ that can carry a range of insidious meanings.”

“Hudak was free to possess Nazi memorabilia in his home and to otherwise peacefully express his views, no matter how odious,” Wilkinson wrote. “This case, however, is about hate crimes, not hate speech. Violent physical assaults are ‘not by any stretch of the imagination expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment.’ And it is well established that Congress may account for racially discriminatory motives when penalizing criminal conduct, as it did in the hate crimes laws at issue here.”

“We live in a time in which racial, ethnic, and religious antagonisms are ‘on the march,’” the appellate judge added. “Hudak’s assaults of his fellow citizens were all too emblematic of this trend. Their harm lay not only in the injuries inflicted on two men and their property, but in the lost safety and dignity of all members of the targeted groups. In Hudak’s balled fists and combat boots lay a message: you are not welcome here.”

Hudak’s arrest and conviction sent a different message, Wilkinson concluded. Jurors “expressed the enduring judgment of the American people that crimes of hate reflect neither who we are nor ever shall be.”

Chief Judge Albert Diaz and Judge James Wynn joined Wilkinson’s opinion.