A mentally ill man who rammed his car into Chabad World Headquarters in Brooklyn was sentenced to time served Wednesday — after a federal judge ripped the Department of Justice for asking for a longer sentence to appease the public’s misconception that he had committed a hate crime.
Before he sentenced Dan Sohail, 36, to the six months he’s already served in jail, plus another seven days to make probation arrangements, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Eric Vitaliano called prosecutors’ request for a 14-month sentence “disturbing on a deep level,” and said the DOJ is supposed to proceed “without fear or favor.”
“Fear or favor about what? To proceed notwithstanding what the (people’s) will might be, what the popular understanding might be, what the popular misunderstanding might be,” the judge asked. “A property crime is what was charged here. Not a hate crime.”
Vitaliano added, “(The government) didn’t charge the misunderstanding of the general public, but it asks the court to sentence on the misunderstanding of the general public.”
Sohail was initially charged with state hate crime charges after he repeatedly rammed the side entrance of the Eastern Parkway house of worship in Crown Heights on Jan. 28, but those charges were dismissed when the feds took over the case.
Instead, federal prosecutors charged him with intentionally defacing or damaging religious real property — a crime he admitted to in May. Though the crime carries a maximum three-year sentence, federal guidelines based on his background and the specifics of the case set his recommended sentence as zero to six months.
“Mr. Sohail desperately sought belonging and understanding through his exploration of Judaism. In January of this year, gripped by mental illness,” wrote Sohail’s lawyer, Mia Eisner-Grynberg of the Federal Defenders. “Rather than an act of hate, as it reasonably appeared at first blush, Mr. Sohail saw his actions as a desperate call for help. Though illogical and severely misguided, his conduct brought him here, to this crossroads.”
On Wednesday, she said Sohail suffered a traumatic and abusive childhood at the hands of his father, and struggled all his life with undiagnosed mental illness.
“It is impossible to square what he did with what he believes,” she said. “The government did a very careful investigation here. They determined that Mr. Sohail was not motivated by hate or animus.”
Video posted online by Kol Haolam News shows Sohail’s Honda sedan backing up and driving into a pair of double doors at Chabad headquarters, knocking one door off its hinges. When he finally emerges from the vehicle, he can be heard shouting, “I f—ing slipped, you a–hole!”
He rammed into the building five times, prosecutors said, though Eisner-Grynberg pointed out he told everyone present to get out of his car’s way first.
U.S. Attorney Eric Silverberg pushed for a higher, 14-month sentence, above the federal guidelines, because “his crime was perceived by the community as the latest in an avalanche of anti-Jewish crimes,” he wrote to the judge on July 22. “The general public immediately perceived it that way as well; in fact, law enforcement’s immediate concern was whether a terror attack had just occurred.”
On Wednesday, Silverberg stressed the “dangerousness” of Sohail speeding into the building.
“Walking away with a sentence of time served, regardless of the details… it sends precisely the wrong message of what is needed at this time,” Silverberg said.
Vitaliano called it a “stain of the soul of New York City” that anti-Jewish crimes are so prevalent that the NYPD uses an online dashboard to track them, but bristled at the idea of using the public’s wrong first impression of what happened to call for a harsher sentence.
“I have enormous respect, and always have had enormous respect for the Department of Justice. That respect includes Mr. Silverberg, and certainly Mr. Nocella,” he said, referring to U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella. “But I am somewhat saddened, perhaps even more than saddened.”
He added, ‘There is a need to sentence Mr. Sohail, and there is a need to remind and awaken the soul of this city, to remove the stain of antisemitism. Two important goals… But there’s no basis in my view to keep Mr. Sohail behind bars to achieve the other goal.”
As part of his sentence, Sohail must pay for the roughly $19,000 in damages to the building as restitution and will be placed on supervised release for a year.
Sohail, who didn’t make a statement at his sentencing, thanked the judge.
“You need help. A hand of help has been extended to you. Please grasp it,” the judge told Sohail. “We pray it will be successful for you.”