A former United States Army specialist who stabbed a black man to death with a sword in the hopes of sparking a race war has pleaded guilty to murder as an act of terrorism, prosecutors say.
James Jackson, 30, travelled from Baltimore to New York City on March 20, 2017, where he stabbed Timothy Caughman to death, before turning himself in at a police station the next day after police released surveillance video of the killing.
He told detectives he had chosen to commit the crime in New York because it is a US media capital and he believed the killing would start a race war, the Manhattan district-attorney's office said in a statement.
He spoke in a calm and collected manner as Judge Laura Ward questioned him in a Manhattan criminal court, saying, "That's true" when asked whether he was armed with a sword and two knives when he began hunting black people on the streets of Midtown.
The district-attorney's office said his guilty plea marks the first conviction of murder as a crime of terrorism in New York state, under terrorism laws that increase sentences for the underlying crimes.
Jackson also pleaded guilty to murder in the first degree in furtherance of an act of terrorism, murder in the second degree as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon.
He faces life in prison without parole at his sentencing hearing next month, the district-attorney's office said.
"If you come here to kill New Yorkers in the name of white nationalism, you will be investigated, prosecuted and incapacitated like the terrorist that you are," district-attorney Cyrus Vance said in a statement.
Jackson told detectives in 2017 he saw Caughman's killing as a "call to arms" and that he hoped the US Government would pursue a, "global policy aimed at the complete extermination of the Negro race", according to the district-attorney's office.
In a 2017 jailhouse interview with New York newspaper the Daily News, Jackson said he intended the stabbing as "a practice run" in a mission to deter interracial relationships.
He said he would rather have killed "a young thug" or, "a successful older black man with blondes … people you see in Midtown. These younger guys that put white girls on the wrong path".
A lawyer for Jackson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jackson served as a specialist in the US Army until 2012, and was deployed in Afghanistan for nearly a year beginning in December 2010.
He was awarded several medals for his conduct.
Reuters/AP
