Man sentenced to 10 years for racially motivated assaults
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A Biddeford man convicted of violating a federal hate crime law with a pair of assaults on Black men has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Police charged Maurice Diggins with two counts of hate crimes and one count of conspiracy in connection to attacks that prosecutors described as unprovoked assaults on black men in Portland and in Biddeford in 2018. Diggins, who’s white, was convicted after trial by an all-white jury. His nephew, also charged in the attacks, pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing. The two cases were the first federal prosecutions in Maine since the government adopted a new hate crime law in 2009.