Man gets 10 years for throwing acid on Latino man’s face during racist, ‘diabolical’ attack
A Wisconsin man who threw acid on a Latino man’s face in a 2019 racist attack has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Last month, 64-year-old Clifton Blackwell was found guilty of first-degree reckless injury with the use of a dangerous weapon as a hate crime after a jury rejected his lawyer’s argument that he had acted in self-defense.
The attack, which was caught on security camera, shows Blackwell, who’s white, throwing acid at Mahud Villalaz, a Peruvian-born U.S. citizen after an argument in front of a restaurant in Milwaukee in November 2019.
Villalaz, who was 42 at the time, suffered second-degree burns on his face. He also testified that the vision in his left eye was permanently damaged.
In this file photo, Clifton A. Blackwell, accused of throwing acid on a Latino man's face during a racist attack, appears in a Milwaukee County Court in Milwaukee on Nov. 6, 2019. (Mike De Sisti/)
Speaking with reporters after the incident, Villalz said that Blackwell accused him of being in the U.S. illegally.
Prosecutors said that Blackwell was waiting for a bus when he told Villalz that he had parked his car illegally. During the argument that followed, Blackwell can be seen on video taking a bottle from his bag, then throwing its contents on the victim’s face.
On Wednesday, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Jean Marie Kies sentenced Blackwell to a decade in prison, noting that the attack had been unprovoked and that his behavior was “diabolical.”
#BREAKING - Video shows the moment a man was hit with battery acid. Police arrested the culprit & call it a hate crime because the victim, who is Latino, says before he was hit by the white male suspect he called him “illegal” STORY: https://t.co/WAiX44Sx9d pic.twitter.com/pb2agxS6Go
— Chernéy Amhara (@CherneyAmharaTV) November 3, 2019
“We’re all different from one another,” Kies told Blackwell. When we let those differences cloud our judgment, that’s bias or prejudice or discrimination, and in this instance it is hate,” she said.
“I’m sure [the acid] was absolutely painful. And you caused him emotional distress that I think is never going to heal. You made him feel he’s not worthy and that’s diabolical,” the judge added.
Blackwell’s attorney, Michael Plaisted, asked the judge for two or three years in prison, but she didn’t hear any remorse from him.
And even though he didn’t set out to hurt anyone that day, “he did and he stands here convicted,” the judge said.
“You don’t tolerate other people,” Kies told Blackwell.
