NYC White Supremacist Killer Sentenced To Life In Prison, DA Says

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — A white man who murdered a black man on the streets of Midtown Manhattan in an attempt to spur a race war will spend the rest of his life in prison, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., announced.

James Jackson, 30, was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole, prosecutors announced. Jackson pleaded guilty to murder and domestic terrorism in January for the March 2017 murder of 66-year-old Timothy Caughman.

The Baltimore U.S. Army veteran's guilty plea was New York Sate's first for the charge of murder as a crime of terrorism, prosecutors said.

"From the outset of this case, the People have rejected any resolution of this case that does not acknowledge the reality that James Jackson is a white supremacist and terrorist," Vance said in court Wednesday.

The Manhattan district attorney added that Jackson's guilty plea "in no way mitigates the horror of his actions," and did not reduce his sentence.

Jackson stabbed Caughman with a replica Roman sword the evening of March 20, 2017, on Ninth Avenue near West 36th Street, prosecutors said. The killer later told police that he traveled to New York City because its status as a global media capital in order to ignite a race war and inspire white men to kill black people.

Caughman survived the initial stabbing, and was able to walk into the Midtown South Precinct station house on West 35th Street while suffering from wounds to his back and chest, police said. Paramedics then rushed him from the precinct to Bellevue hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said.

Jackson confessed to police that he had stalked other black men days before killing Caughman, according to the criminal complaint against him. Jackson also told police that Caughman's murder was "practice," and that he was planning to kill more black victims.

The white supremacist turned himself into police the day after stabbing Caughman, said prosecutors. During interviews with investigators, Jackson said he considered his acts a "political terrorist attack," a "call to arms" and a "declaration of global total war," according to prosecutors.

Photo by Seth Wenig/Associated Press