David Lewis Rice

David Lewis Rice (born 1958) is a follower of the Christian Identity movement who, on Christmas Eve 1985, gained entry to the Seattle home of civil rights attorney Charles Goldmark using a toy gun and pretending to be a deliveryman. Rice erroneously believed the family to be Jewish Communists, and saw the crime as part of a broader religious war between American Christianity and Soviet atheism. At trial, Rice argued he was not responsible for the crime because he was insane at the time.

Rice was convicted in 1986 of aggravated murder for the four deaths and was sentenced to death. Rice repeatedly displayed psychotic symptoms throughout his trial, but his attorney failed to emphasize them in his defense. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to the crimes in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. He remains in prison serving out a life sentence.

The Goldmark Murders remain one of the most notorious anti-Semitic hate crimes in recent memory in the United States, even though the victims were not actually Jewish. It also remains a cause celebre of capital punishment proponents, since Rice avoided death...
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