Wendell Edwards' 11 News report

A teenage white supremacist convicted in a savage attack on a Hispanic boy at a party was sentenced Friday to life in prison.

KHOU - TV

David Tuck

Tuck was convicted in the shockingly vicious beating and sodomizing of a Hispanic teenager during an April party in the Houston suburb of Spring. Witnesses testified that Tuck shouted racial slurs as he kicked the 17-year-old, cut him with a knife, sodomized him with a plastic pipe and poured bleach on him.

The victim, who wasn't expected to live, remained hospitalized in intensive care for three months and has undergone several surgeries.

Before jurors began deliberating David Henry Tuck’s fate Friday, prosecutors told them the only appropriate punishment was a life sentence.

Prosecutor Mike Trent said that Tuck’s history of increasingly violent crimes shows that he is beyond redemption and rehabilitation. He added that if Tuck were free, he would continue to commit more violent crimes.

“He is an evil person and he is not going to change or get better,” Trent said. “We need protection from him. You are the only ones that provide that.”

“Even if you give him life in prison, it will be more mercy than he showed to (the victim) that night,” Trent said.

Defense attorney Chuck Hinton appealed to the jurors’ religious faith, saying that Jesus would show Tuck mercy.

“I know that justice has to be done. I know a terrible thing happened. Justice needs to be done but with mercy,” Hinton said.

He also told jurors that Tuck didn’t have opportunities in life to make the best choices because he had an abusive and absent father, he was raised by a single mother who had to work all the time, and his only role model was his older brother, a skinhead who is currently in jail.

Prosecutors paraded a chain of witnesses before jurors Friday to describe more than a half-dozen attacks in which Tuck and his neo-Nazi friends beat, kicked or cut whoever they believed had crossed them. The jury, which convicted Tuck of aggravated sexual assault Thursday, is now considering a prison sentence ranging from five years to life in prison.

Psychiatrists and psychologists also testified Friday about Tuck’s mental state. Among the more chilling revelations were Tuck’s statements that he fantasized about dismembering a girl and having sex with her corpse.

Tuck’s mother, Sharon, told jurors that Tuck’s father was physically and verbally absuive to her and didn’t have much contact with his son.

Sharon Tuck said that David Tuck’s older brother might have influenced his racist attitudes.

“I don’t believe that David is in a skinhead organization. That’s just something going through his mind,” she said.

Tuck’s fourth- and fifth-grade special-education teacher, Linda Cabbell, told jurors that Tuck had assaulted her during a classroom confrontation. He was 12 in fifth grade because he’d been held back.

Cabbell said she tried to intervene while Tuck was having a tantrum in the classroom.

“He turned around and socked me right in the eye,” breaking her glasses and blackening her eye, Cabbell said. Tuck then kicked her in the groin, she added, and she held him down until help arrived. Tuck was later expelled.

James Vau, 51, said he was gassing up his truck and planning to buy ice cream for his daughter at a convenience story when the three confronted him.

Vau and another witness said the men, menacingly dressed as “skinheads” in boots and chains, began shouting anti-Hispanic racial slurs at Vau. Vau said he responded that Jesus Christ had made all people equal, triggering a beating and stomping from the three that left him hospitalized with a broken nose and head injuries.

Others testified about assaults in 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2006, with prosecutors noting that Tuck rarely was free for more than a couple months before getting into more trouble.

Prosecutor Mike Trent on Thursday told the jury, made up of six whites, five blacks and one Hispanic, that the most recent attack on the Hispanic teen was motivated by Tuck’s hatred of minorities.

Trent said Tuck shouted “White Power!” and various racial epithats during the attack.

Defense attorneys, in their closing arguments, said despite testimony about swastikas being found on Tuck’s possessions, the case was not about racial hatred but about a party where drugs were taken and somebody got hurt.

Defense attorneys blamed two witnesses to the attack, 16-year-old Gus Sons and his 13-year-old sister Danielle, for sexually assaulting the victim.

During the trial, Gus Sons and his sister testified they helplessly watched the attack, and didn’t wake their mother, who slept through it, until the next morning while the victim lay in their back yard.

The Sons siblings said the attack was triggered by the victim’s drunken pass at Danielle Sons, who was 12 at the time, and by an alleged attempt by the victim to steal drugs from Gus Sons.

But defense attorney Chuck Hinton, in his closing arguments, called Gus Sons an armed, crazed drug dealer and a “lying scumbag.”

The victim, who has been seated with his family near the front row since testifying Wednesday, has said he remembers nothing of the assault.

The victim is a high school senior who has returned to school but is still recovering from his injuries.

His family has said it believes the attack was a hate crime and are working to change the state’s hate crime law.

Authorities have said they didn’t prosecute it as a hate crime because it wouldn’t affect the possible punishment.