Court finds hassid guilty of gay black man’s 2013 beating in Brooklyn

A hassidic Jew was found guilty in the brutal beating of a gay black man.

Mayer Herskovic, 23, one of five hassidic men indicted in the December 2013 beating that left the victim blind in one eye, was found guilty of second-degree gang assault, unlawful imprisonment and menacing charges on Friday by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun.

Herskovic will be sentenced in November. He faces threeand-a-halfto 15-years in prison.

On Monday morning, Herskovic’s bail was increased from $50,000 to $150,000. He spent a half hour in a Brooklyn holding cell after the judge increased his bail until a bail bondsman cleared his bail and was released, according to the New York Daily News.

Of the four other alleged assailants, two had the charges dropped and two others – Pinchas Braver and Abraham Winkler – pleaded guilty to downgraded charges in August. Braver and Winkler were each required to pay the victim, Taj Patterson, $1,400 in restitution and perform 150 hours of community service in a “culturally diverse” neighborhood.

Herskovic and the other attackers surrounded Patterson as he walked home from a friend’s birthday in the largely ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg on December 1, 2013, according to trial testimony.

Patterson in June sued the New York Police Department and New York City in federal court, claiming they improperly favored the Shomrim, the Orthodox security patrol to which some of the five alleged assailants belonged, and at the patrol’s request prematurely closed the investigation of the assault. (JTA)