A white Iowa woman who admitted deliberately driving a car into her two children because of her race will spend more than 20 years in prison, FoxNews.com reported Thursday.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Ross sentenced Nicole Poole Franklin, 43, to 25 years and four months in prison in a federal lawsuit. Prosecutors asked for a 27-year sentence in a document last week.
Prosecutors say Franklin’s SUV crashed into a 12-year-old black boy and a 14-year-old Latino girl because of their race and ethnicity. Franklin first drove across the kerb and knocked the boy down, saying she ran over the boy because he was “like ISIS” and “he shouldn’t be there.” ”
A few minutes later, Franklin drove across the sidewalk and knocked the girl down, causing bruising, scratches and concussions, prosecutors said. Franklin said she targeted the girl because she thought she was Mexican, that she had taken “our house and our jobs” and “shouldn’t be in this country.”
Franklin was later arrested after using racist language against an employee and a customer at a gas station. Franklin’s public defender asked for a sentence of no more than 27 years. He argued in a document that she suffered from “a serious pre-existing mental illness exacerbated by the use of methamphetamine (ice), numerous extremely difficult living conditions that occurred almost simultaneously, and that some of the worst aspects of the culture played a role behind the scenes, further poisoning her mental state.” ”
