The man who allegedly left several racist voicemails directed at the Mayor of San Anselmo will not face charges, the Marin County District Attorney announced on Wednesday.
Three voicemails were left on the San Anselmo main phone line in May which "contained threats that were racially charged in nature" targeted towards the town’s mayor, Brian Colbert, who is Black.
Police arrested 63-year-old Jerald Welty at his San Anselmo home on May 10 within a few hours of the initial report. He served two days in jail before he was released.
Colbert said in a statement at the time that the suspect sent him "words that we associate with the Jim Crow South, not Northern California in the 21st Century."
However, Marin County District Attorney Lori E. Frugoli announced in a video on Wednesday that the county would not pursue charges against Welton.
While she thoroughly denounced the language, calling it "reprehensible and disgusting," she said that a "team of very experienced prosecutors," including members of an ad-hoc hate crime committee, determined that the case was a hate incident, not a hate crime, meaning no laws were broken.
"There are clear legal distinctions between a hate incident, which this was, and a hate crime," she said. "For it to be a hate crime there must be an underlying crime identified and in each case the evidence is evaluated to determine whether the underlying criminal behavior was motivated by hate.” This incident did not qualify as a crime under state law, her office said.
The district attorney’s office defines hate crime as "a crime against a person, group, or property motivated by the victim's real or perceived protected social group," while a hate incident "is an action or behavior motivated by hate but which, for one or more reasons, is not a crime." Hate incident include name-calling or insults.
The office noted in a press release that the U.S. constitution allows hate speech as long as it does not interfere with the civil rights of others.
The specific contents of the voicemails were not released to the public, though Colbert said previously they contained racial epithets.
Colbert has served on the Town Council since 2017 and is serving his first term as mayor. He is believed to be the first Black resident elected to a municipal council in Marin County history.
