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A white Florida man has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after making racist threats against a Black former college basketball coach. The former coach, Jamill Jones, was convicted in the 2018 death of a man he punched near a hotel in NYC.
Michael Feeney, 61, was sentenced in Brooklyn Federal Court Friday (February 25) for threatening to kill Jones, who avoided jail time in the one-punching death of a white tourist and was sentenced to three years probation for the third-degree misdemeanor assault. According to reports, Feeney left threatening messages with Jones' attorney back in July 2020, shortly after Jones received his sentence.
Jones was the assistant basketball coach for Wake Forest University in North Carolina when he punched Sandor Szabo in the early hours of August 5, 2018. Szabo hit his head on the pavement and died two days later. Jones was sentenced to 1,500 hours of community service and charged a $1,000 fine.
Feeney felt like Jones' sentence was too lenient, according to voicemail messages he left.
"This for the ni––r lover attorney [attorney]," Feeney is recorded saying. "[The] judge made perfectly clear we can punch him to death and we get probation and community service."
Feeney continues, stating that the attorney should urge Jones to hire security for his family and claimed to know where Jones' relatives live. "We will execute that n––r's family," Feeney said. "They will be hunted down and f––king beaten to death."
Authorities say that Feeney did not Szabo personally and is not a known member of any hate group. In their investigation, prosecutors discovered Feeney made 200 calls to media outlets, Congress, and organizations including Planned Parenthood between February 2020 and the end of the July that same year.
In one voicemail to Rep. Alexandro Ocasio-Cortez, Feeney said the Bronx native "should be lynched." "We're going to pray someone that someone cuts her head off," he said in a voicemail.
Feeney pleaded guilty to making the threats against Jones in December 2020 as part of a plea agreement.
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