EDITOR'S NOTE (9/27/2006)

All charges were dropped against Jose T. Sousa in connection with an alleged attack on an openly gay Harvard student in 2005. FULL STORY.

The court case concerning last December’s alleged hate crime at Columbia University has seen no progress, although legal representatives expressed a desire to work out a deal at last Wednesday’s hearing, sources said yesterday.

Vandals wrote “anti-semitic graffiti including swastikas and writings in German and Russian regarding Adolf Hitler and Jews” on the walls of a Columbia dorm room on Dec. 1, according to the criminal complaint.

The defendants, Columbia sophomores Matthew Brown, 20, and Stephen Curtis Searles, 19, were arrested the next day and later admitted their culpability to police.

But a hearing yesterday made little ground, ending in an adjournment of the case until June 12, according to a spokeswoman for the office of the District Attorney of Manhattan.

According to Searles’ attorney, Howard Weiswasser, neither defendant has entered a plea and “everything is up in the air.”

The lack of a plea persists despite both defendants’ admissions of culpability upon arrest on Dec. 2.

“We both got drunk and wrote the graffiti on the dorm walls,” Brown said, according to the criminal complaint.

Searles stated in that same complaint that he “had a purple marker and [Brown] had a red marker. We were drunk and we wrote anti-Semitic graffiti on the walls in our friend’s dorm suite.”

The defendants are each charged with one count of criminal mischief in the fourth degree as a hate crime, a Class E felony, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Both Brown and Searles are currently suspended from Columbia until the conclusion of their criminal case, at which time the university will decide on their course of disciplinary action, Weiswasser said.

The incident was the fourth occurrence of race-related vandalism on campus in a little over a year.

Students found a swastika posted on a door in Watt Residence Hall in late November, the Columbia Spectator reported that month.

Columbia students rallied in opposition to hate crimes and in support of its victims by carrying out a candlelight vigil, students at the college told The Crimson last December.

Columbia Dean of Student Affairs Chris Colombo declined to comment.

Harvard’s own ongoing hate-related criminal proceeding has seen a similar lack of progress.

The case addresses an incident last spring in which Galo Garcia III ’05 was assaulted and targeted with homophobic and racial epithets as he was leaving a dance sponsored by the Harvard Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance.

According to Middlesex district attorney spokeswoman Emily LaGrassa no “major things” have happened in the case. It has so far included only two court dates, including a July arraignment and a September pre-trial hearing, she added.

The next court date, scheduled for March 23, is a compliance hearing.

The defendants, Timothy J. Kelleher and Jose T. Sousa, are charged each with one count of assault and battery and another count of assault and battery to intimidate—both misdemeanor charges.

The defendants, who are not Harvard affiliates, have both plead “not guilty.”

According to LaGrassa, they each face a maximum of two and a half years in a house of correction for each count.

—Staff writer Matthew S. Blumenthal can be reached at mblument@fas.harvard.edu.