20-yr jail for knife attack on prof

BY A STAFF WRITER
URBANA (IL) — A 26-year-old man who slashed A.U. Dhammika Dharmapala’s throat while making an apparent reference to the victim’s race, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on June 16.

Joshua Scaggs will have to serve at least 17 years for the attempted first-degree murder of 44-year-old Dharmapala, a University of Illinois law professor.

Dharmapala, a US citizen of South Asian origin, was sitting in the Illinois Terminal in downtown Champaign waiting for a train to Chicago about 5.40 am on December 7, 2011, when Scaggs jumped from a nearby seat and lunged at him with a knife, shouting “This is my country. I will kill you.”

Scaggs retreated for an instant before plunging the knife into Dharmapala’s neck.

After being in a mental institution for more than two years to become fit to stand trial, Scaggs pleaded guilty in May to attempted first-degree murder in exchange for a promise from Assistant State’s Attorney Steve Ziegler that he would seek no more than 20 years in prison. Ziegler also dismissed two other aggravated battery counts.

In an emotionally-charged sentencing hearing, Judge Harry Clem called Scaggs’s actions “one of the most appalling crimes to ever come before this judge’s bench.”

About 60 people, mostly supporters of Dharmapala, packed the courtroom.

“It is a crime where the defendant saw a person he thought was from a different country and attacked that person in a way that his intent was to kill him,” Clem said.

Scaggs cried as he sought forgiveness from Dharmapala.
“I can’t say ‘I apologize’ enough to you, sir, for what I did to you and your family. I’m sorry for your emotional stress and pain and everything that goes along with what happened that day,” Scaggs said.

Dharmapala took 11 minutes to read aloud a three-page victim impact statement detailing for the judge the physical and emotional toll the attack has taken on him and his wife.

He said he has had three surgeries, will need continued therapy for at least another five years, and no longer feels safe living in Champaign.

“While any violent attack is traumatic, being targeted for killing because of the color of one’s skin in exceptionally horrific. This is an immutable characteristic and an attack of this nature gives rise to constant anxiety about the possibility of future attacks,” Dharmapala said.

Because Scaggs does not have the means to pay, Ziegler did not seek restitution for Dharmapala’s out-of-pocket expenses, which Dharmapala put at more than $19,000.

Dharmapala, an authority on tax policy, public economics, law and economics, and political economics, joined the Illinois faculty in 2009 from the University of Connecticut. He earned his master’s degree in economics from the University of Western Australia and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California-Berkeley.