Commonwealth v. Sinnot, 11 EAP 2010 (Pa. 2011)

The defendant began harassing a neighbor, whose father he claimed had cheated him in the past.  He called her a "wetback," demanded that she return to Mexico, and, also, to the Alamo.  The neighbor told Sinnot that she wasn't aware of the incident to which he was referring and, also, that she was not Mexican.  Sinnot went into his home, got a drill and a hammer, and then attacked the victim.  When the police arrived, Sinnot refused to come out of his house; instead he suggested that the police should check his victim's green card.

Sinnot was eventually arrested and charged with, inter alia, ethnic intimidation.  He appealed and, in a published opinion, the Superior Court created a new per se rule that, in order to sustain a conviction for ethnic intimidation, the Commonwealth must prove that the sole motivation for an assault was racism.  The Commonwealth petitioned for allocatur, which was granted.

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania disagreed with the Court below.  Instead, the Court held that if "the evidence of criminal intent (here, racial animus) is sufficiently established, it cannot be negated by establishing that a second intent coexisted in the mind of the actor. Such a rule would lead to an absurd result which the legislature did not intend.  Accordingly, we hold § 2710’s intent element is satisfied if there is evidence that ethnic malice was a motivator for the defendant’s criminal act; it need not be the sole motivator."