Racial hoax

In 1931, two white women falsely accused nine African-American teenagers of raping them on a train in Alabama. All but one were convicted and sentenced to death by all-white juries.

Emmett Till was a 14-year-old African-American who was accused of "offending" a white woman in Money, Mississippi, in 1955. He was abducted and lynched several days later. In 2017, author Timothy Tyson released details of a 2008 interview with Carolyn Bryant. He claimed that during the interview she had disclosed that she had fabricated parts of her testimony at the trial of his accused killers. Tyson said that during the interview, Bryant retracted her testimony that Till had grabbed her around her waist and uttered obscenities, saying "that part's not true".[13] However, the 'recanting' claim made by Tyson was not on his tape-recording of the interview. “It is true that that part is not on tape because I was setting up the tape recorder" Tyson said. Donham’s daughter-in-law, Marsha Bryant, who was present for the two interviews, said her mother-in-law “never recanted.” The support Tyson provided to back up his claim, was a handwritten note that he said had been made at the time.[14]

Tawana Glenda Brawley gained notoriety in 1987–88 for falsely accusing six white men of having raped her. The charges received widespread national attention because of her age (15), the persons accused (including police officers and a prosecuting attorney), and the shocking state in which Brawley was discovered after the rape (naked and covered with feces). Brawley's accusations were given widespread media attention in part from the involvement of her advisers, including the Reverend Al Sharpton and attorneys Alton H. Maddox, Jr. and C. Vernon Mason, three other African-Americans.[15]

After hearing evidence, a grand jury concluded in October 1988 that Brawley had not been a victim of rape and that she herself may have created the appearance of an attack.[16] Steven Pagones, the New York prosecutor whom Brawley had accused as being one of her assailants, successfully sued her and her three advisers for defamation.[17]

The case of Charles Stuart is often cited as an example of a racial hoax.[1][18] On October 23, 1989, in Boston, Stuart and his pregnant wife Carol were driving when, according to Stuart, a black gunman forced his way into the car and shot them both, hitting Carol in the head and Stuart in the body. Still alive, Stuart drove away and called the police, who conducted a search of Mission Hill, Boston, a mostly black area. Carol died later that night; the baby, delivered by caesarean section, died 17 days later.

Stuart picked out Willie Bennett, a black man, from a photo lineup. The police shifted their attention onto Stuart when Stuart's brother Matthew told them that Stuart had committed the murder, and when they noted inconsistencies in Stuart's account. On January 4, 1990, Stuart committed suicide. The police later learned that Stuart had committed the murder to cash in on his wife's insurance policy.[1][19]

In 1992, Jesse Anderson became infamous for stabbing his wife Barbara E. Anderson thirty-seven times while in the parking lot of a T.G.I. Friday's in Milwaukee. Anderson blamed two African-American men for attacking him and his wife, and even presented police with a Los Angeles Clippers basketball cap he claimed to have knocked off the head of one of the assailants.

When details of the crime were made public, a university student told police Anderson had purchased the hat from him a few days earlier. According to employees at a military surplus store, the red-handled fishing knife which was used to murder Barbara was sold to Anderson only a few weeks earlier. Police stated that the store was the only one in Milwaukee that sold that type of knife. Anderson was shortly thereafter charged with murder, found guilty, and sentenced to life imprisonment.[20]

In October 1994, in South Carolina, Susan Smith drowned her sons by putting them in her car and letting it roll into John D. Long Lake. She called the police and stated that an armed black man had hijacked her car with her two sons inside. After an extensive manhunt, Smith confessed that she had killed her sons, and, in July 1995, was sentenced to life imprisonment.[21][22][23]

The Duke lacrosse case was a criminal investigation into a 2006 false accusation of rape made against three members of the men's lacrosse team at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina by Crystal Mangum, an African American student at North Carolina Central University[24][25] who worked as a stripper,[26] dancer and escort.[27]

Many people involved in, or commenting on the case, including Durham prosecutor Mike Nifong (who was later disbarred), called or suggested that the alleged assault was a hate crime.[28][29][30]

In October 2008, Ashley Todd, a volunteer for the U.S. presidential campaign of Republican John McCain,[31] falsely claimed to have been the victim of robbery and politically motivated physical assault by a supporter of McCain's Democratic opponent Barack Obama.[32]

The story broke less than two weeks before the 2008 United States presidential election on November 4. Todd later confessed to inventing the story after surveillance photos and a polygraph test were presented. She was charged with filing a false police report, and entered a probation program for first-time offenders.

In January 2016, two black and one Hispanic female University at Albany (SUNY) students (Alexis Briggs, Asha Burwell and Ariel Agudio) gained national attention[33][34] when they accused 10 to 12 white men and women of harassment and assault and that "racial slurs were used by the perpetrators"[35] while riding a public CDTA bus. Hillary Clinton tweeted her support for them, asserting "There's no excuse for racism and violence on a college campus."[36]

The three were eventually indicted by a grand jury and arraigned for "10 misdemeanor charges, including assault, attempted assault and false reporting, along with a violation for harassment." Furthermore, the university expelled Agudio and Burwell and suspended Briggs for two years.[37]

Agudio and Burwell faced up to two years in jail for false reporting conviction but were sentenced to three years' probation, 200 hours of community service and a $1,000 fine when they were found guilty of two charges out of the original eleven. Briggs accepted a plea deal from the district attorney's office of community service in exchange for a public apology.[38]

In September 2016, Georgia police officer Sherry Hall claimed "a 6-foot, 230-pound African American man" had shot her, and that only her protective vest saved her life. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation determined that she fabricated the whole incident and charged her with four felonies, including evidence tampering and giving false statements to investigators.[39] Hall was convicted of 11 criminal charges, including "making false statements, violating her oath and tampering with evidence," and sentenced to 15 years in prison and 23 years on probation.[40]

In October 2016, Maria Daly, the wife of a police officer, reported a burglary at her family home. She stated that jewelry and money had been stolen, and that her house was tagged with graffiti referencing the Black Lives Matter movement.[41] Police determined that the entire account was false, and charged Daly with filing a false police report and misleading a police investigation.[41] Daly eventually pleaded guilty, essentially confirming that she had staged the burglary and spray-painted the house herself.[42]

On 3 December 2016, Yasmine Seweid, an 18-year-old Baruch College student, claimed she was attacked by three young men on a NYC subway two days prior. She asserted they smelled like alcohol and said "Donald Trump" before calling her a "terrorist", grabbing and breaking her purse, following her to another car as she tried to escape, and ultimately pulling off her hijab. She reported the alleged attack to the NYPD, and their Hate Crimes Task Force began investigating, including searching through security footage for her alleged attackers.[43] [44] Seweid claimed that the worst part of the alleged assault was that other passengers watched and did nothing to come to her aid, writing on Facebook: “It breaks my heart that so many individuals chose to be bystanders while watching me get harassed verbally and physically by these disgusting pigs.”[45]

After admitting to police that she fabricated the assault, Seweid was charged with filing a false police report. She claimed she had done so in order to create an excuse for breaking curfew and so that her parents wouldn't know she was romantically involved with a non-Muslim.[46] The following day, her sister claimed that Seweid was a victim of the police and media, who had caused her "an insurmountable amount of violence and trauma", and that others should reflect on why Muslim women felt a need to invent hate crimes in which they were victims.[47][48] The incident drew international attention,[49] and provoked a rebuke from Mayor Bill de Blasio.[50]

In January 2017, hunting guide Walker Daugherty and his client Edwin Roberts were both shot near the Texas-Mexico border. Daugherty and his fellow guide, Michael Bryant, told authorities that they were attacked by immigrants who had entered the country illegally and tried to steal an RV.[51] All the bullet casings and projectiles found on the scene, however, matched guns belonging to the hunting party.[52] Investigation determined that Daugherty shot Roberts and Bryant shot Daugherty.[53] A grand jury indicted Bryant and Daugherty on charges of "using deadly conduct by discharging firearms in the direction of others," a felony.[54] Roberts and his wife subsequently filed a personal injury lawsuit against Bryant, Daugherty, and their business seeking $1 million in damages for negligence.[55]

In January 2018, Khawlah Noman, an 11-year-old Muslim schoolgirl in Toronto, Canada, alleged that a man used scissors to cut her hijab. She received statements of support from prime minister Justin Trudeau and Toronto mayor John Tory before there was any evidence to support the claim. A police investigation later found that the alleged attack was a hoax. This prompted debate on how hoaxes could affect reporting on real anti-Muslim crimes in the future.[56] Noman's specification that her imagined attacker was Asian caused protests by members of that community throughout Canada, who asked for, but never received, an apology from Trudeau.[57][58][59]

In September 2019, Amari Allen, a black middle school student in Virginia, claimed that three male white classmates pinned her down on the playground and cut off "chunks" of her dreadlocks. According to Allen, the boys called her "ugly" and her hair "nappy." Her grandmother asked on national TV for the boys to be dismissed from the school. However, security camera footage did not corroborate her story and eventually Allen confessed that she had cut her hair herself.[60][61][62]

In 2019, Jussie Smollett, an American actor and singer on the Fox drama series Empire, made national news for fabricating a racially-motivated attack. On January, 22, a letter arrived at the Chicago studio of Smollett's employer that was addressed to Smollett and depicted a stick figure hanging from a tree with a gun pointing towards it. It read "Smollett, Jussie you will die" and "MAGA" and contained a white powder determined to be Tylenol.[63] On January 29, 2019, Smollett told police that he was attacked in the early morning of that day in the 300 block of East Lower North Water Street in Chicago's Streeterville neighborhood by two men in ski masks who called him racial and homophobic slurs in what was initially investigated as a hate crime.[64] Smollett was indicted on February 20, 2019, for disorderly conduct consisting of paying two Nigerian-American brothers to stage a fake hate crime assault on him and filing a false police report.[65] Smollett's defense team reached a deal with prosecutors on March 26, 2019, in which all charges were dropped in return for Smollett performing community service and forfeiting his $10,000 bond.[66] On March 27, 2019, it was announced that the FBI would be investigating as to why the charges were dismissed.[67]

In March 2019, Anayeli Dominguez Peña, a student at the University of La Verne, reported that a racist Instagram message had been sent to several members of "Decolonize ULV", a student-led antiracist group. The next day Dominguez Peña claimed that she found her car on fire outside her apartment. Two months later Dominguez Peña reported that she'd been assaulted by a masked man.[68] In March 2020, Dominguez Peña was charged with falsifying her reports.[69]

In August 2016, former firefighter Jason Stokes claimed that the Black Lives Matter movement had set fire to his home and written "lie with pigs, fry like bacon" on the wall in retaliation for his "Blue Lives Matter" banner.[70] Police charged Stokes with arson, concluding that he had set the fire himself and written the offending message to cover up the crime, and had also booby-trapped the house to hinder investigation.[71] A jury acquitted Stokes on May 15, 2017, agreeing that it was arson but not finding "enough evidence to convict Stokes."[72]