Killing of Vincent Chin

Vincent Jen Chin (Chinese: 陳果仁; May 18, 1955 – June 23, 1982) was an American draftsman of Chinese descent who was killed in a racially motivated assault by two white men, Chrysler plant supervisor Ronald Ebens and his stepson, laid-off autoworker Michael Nitz. Ebens and Nitz assailed Chin following a brawl that took place at a strip club in Highland Park, Michigan, where Chin had been celebrating his bachelor party with friends in advance of his upcoming wedding. Against the backdrop of high anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States at the time – known as "Japan bashing" – they had assumed that Chin was Japanese, and a witness described them using anti-Asian racial slurs as they attacked him, ultimately beating him to death.

Although accounts vary, the men were expelled from the club following a physical altercation. Ebens and Nitz eventually found Chin in front of a Highland Park McDonald's. There, Nitz held Chin down while Ebens repeatedly bashed him on the head with a baseball bat. Chin was taken to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, where he died of his injuries four days later. In their first trial, Ebens and Nitz accepted a plea bargain to reduce the charges from second-degree murder to manslaughter.

Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Charles Kaufman sentenced Ebens and Nitz to three years' probation and a $3,000 fine, but no jail time. Explaining his rationale, Kaufman said that Ebens and Nitz "weren't the kind of men you send to jail ... You don't make the punishment fit the crime; you make the punishment fit the criminal." Described by the president of the Detroit Chinese Welfare Council as a "$3,000 license to kill", the lenient sentence led to an uproar from Asian Americans and spurred the community into activism. The advocacy group American Citizens for Justice (ACJ) was formed to protest the sentencing. The case has since been viewed as a critical turning point for Asian American civil rights engagement and a rallying cry for stronger federal hate crime legislation.