Defense attorney: It was a bar brawl, not a hate crime

BOISE (AP) - A defense attorney for one of two men charged with committing a federal hate crime told jurors Tuesday that the fight that led to the charge was simply a barroom brawl, not a racially motivated attack.

The trial of Beau E. Hansen and Jonathan L. Henery began in Idaho's U.S. District Court this week. Prosecutors said the two men, who are both white, yelled racial slurs while they assaulted a black man at a Boise strip club.

Attorneys for both men concede that their clients might be guilty of battery, but nothing more.

"This is a bar fight. It's not a hate crime," Thomas Dominick, the attorney for Henery, said in opening statements.

Mark Ackley, who represents Hansen, also denied that race played any role, telling jurors that Derrick Lewis provoked the fight by saying something degrading to Henery's sister.

"It was a free-for-all. It was a barroom brawl," Ackley said.

Lewis, now 46, said he still suffers from eye trouble from injuries he suffered in the Oct. 20, 2013, attack.