Matthew Gregg, 27, is the first person in the state of Delaware to be convicted of a felony hate crime. He is accused of racially harassing a Black woman employee, targeting her with racist and sexist slurs. After two months of consistent racist targeting, he only got sentenced to four months in prison, according to The News Journal.
Gregg has been harassing a Black woman employee of Gov. John Carney’s office. Per the News Journal, he called the woman one hundred and 160 times between November and December of 2020. Within those calls he used sexist and racist slurs including the N-word. He was arrested that December on charges of harassment and terroristic threatening. Then, he was convicted by Delaware’s Division of Civil Rights and Public Trust.
He received his sentence July 1.
More on the case from Delaware Online:
Gregg also threatened to kill the receptionist and throw a brick at the governor’s head, according to the Department of Justice’s sentencing memorandum. In the department’s message to the judge, Deputy Attorney General Nicole Mozee called Gregg’s harassment “intentional, abhorrent and targeted.”
“People with prejudicial beliefs who do discriminatory things do not experience a temporary lapse in judgment but formulate an ingrained belief system over time,” Mozee said.
She wrote that Gregg was upset about the COVID-19 mandates Carney put in place, as they limited his work hours. However, she said none of his calls to the governor’s secretary actually protested the mandates.
The Department of Justice said though Gregg “minimal” criminal history, it was still necessary to send him to prison for the “severity” of the offense. Not convicting him would “ignore the wider historical context of racism and sexism,” per the DOJ.
Though Gregg has accepted responsibility for his actions, he will be on probation following prison and required to complete community service, anger management and substance abuse counseling, reports say.
A conversation should be had about how to rehabilitate a convicted felon but especially one charged with a hate crime. There’s a good chance Gregg is going to come out of prison spewing the same slurs. These court-ordered requirements may not turn him into an antiracist.