The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to review the case of a man who is serving more than 23 years in prison for hate-related assaults with a wooden stick on three people.
Kevin Aamir Mumin — who is Black — was convicted of three counts of assault with a deadly weapon along with hate crime allegations involving three Hispanic victims, along with one count of sexual battery involving a 17-year-old girl who was attacked on a bus in February 2023.
Last October, a three-justice panel from the state’s 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected the defense’s contention that two of the jury’s findings that the offenses by Mumin in August 2023 were hate crimes were unsupported by the evidence.
The justices also found that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by allowing the prosecution to present evidence involving four alleged uncharged incidents with Hispanic people at a supermarket the same year.
“All three assault with a deadly weapon crimes were directed at Hispanic victims who were strangers that Mumin encountered in public then attacked without being provoked,” according to the appellate court panel’s Oct. 30 ruling.
The panel found that Mumin’s testimony alone was sufficient to reasonably support the jury’s hate crime findings, along with other evidence, including video surveillance footage that showed Mumin hitting one of the victims in the head with a stick without being provoked.
“The facts of these incidents, along with Mumin’s testimony that he becomes defensive around Hispanic people because he believes they send negative energy toward him, establish a consistent pattern — that Mumin tends to violently assault Hispanic people based on a biased belief that they are inherently dangerous even though they are not engaging in any dangerous or threatening behavior,” the appellate court justices found.
The charges involved crimes in Santa Monica and Los Angeles, according to Santa Monica police.
Mumin, now 38, is serving a state prison sentence of 23 years and four months.