Inmate gets added prison time for hate crime for racial slur, assault on Black guard

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    Lincoln, Nebraska (Lincoln Journal Star) — Aprison inmate Wednesday got 3-4 more years in prison for using a racial slur before attacking a Black guard.

Prosecutors say Devon Keezer, who is white and pleaded no contest to terroristic threats with a hate crime enhancement, used a racial slur and told the guard “You need to learn some respect” before punching him repeatedly in the face in the yard at the State Penitentiary on June 23.

Chief Deputy Lancaster County Attorney Bruce Prenda said Keezer is a member of a white supremacist gang and has a white power tattoo on his arm.

He added that the community and the state are working hard to try to rid communities of hate, and use of racial slurs supported by those groups “cannot be accepted or tolerated wherever it occurs.”

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Keezer, 31, told District Judge Jodi Nelson it was a heat-of-the-moment kind of thing that he immediately regretted.

Deputy Public Defender Tim Eppler said Keezer maintains he was upset about the guard not letting a player on his prison volleyball team into the yard and didn’t assault him over race.

He said Keezer later apologized to the guard and lost 2½ years of good time already as a result of the incident.

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Before she told Keezer his sentence, Nelson said he made an ugly comment to a corrections employee and attacked him viciously all for simply doing his job.

“Using the kinds of incendiary language that you used just has to stop. Not only for you. It just has to stop in general,” she said.

Keezer is in prison on a York County sentence on a gun charge.

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