The Judge Was Right. The Prosecutors Were the Problem.
The six-month sentence for ramming a car into Chabad's packed headquarters was legally inevitable — because federal prosecutors never charged a hate crime.
On the night of January 28, Dan Sohail pulled up to 770 Eastern Parkway — Chabad-Lubavitch's world headquarters in Brooklyn — cleared the security barriers with his hands, and then drove his Honda Accord into the synagogue entrance five times, reversing between each impact to reload. Inside the building, roughly 2,000 worshippers had gathered for Yud Shevat, one of the most sacred dates on the Chabad calendar — the 75th anniversary of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson assuming leadership of the movement. The doors were knocked off their hinges. No one died. Only a structural post between the two entrance doors stopped the car from going straight into the shul.
Judge Eric N. Vitaliano then sentenced Sohail to time served plus seven days. The Crown Heights community erupted. The condemnations came quickly and loudly, and they were entirely understandable. But the fury is aimed at the wrong address.
The judge told the truth from the bench. "A property crime is what was charged here. Not a hate crime," Vitaliano said, adding that he was "saddened" that the government wanted him to sentence based on "the general misunderstanding of the public." His hands were tied — legally, correctly, and entirely because of what prosecutors chose to put in the indictment.
That is where the real scandal lives.
The U.S. Department of Justice had a federal hate-crime statute ready to use. 18 U.S.C. § 247 — the Church Arson Prevention Act — prohibits intentionally damaging religious real property because of its religious character. It was written precisely for attacks on synagogues, churches and mosques. Sohail drove a car into a synagogue, on one of the holiest days of the year, while two thousand Jews were inside. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York looked at that set of facts and charged him with damaging religious property — the baseline count — without the hate-crime enhancement that would have opened the door to a genuinely deterrent sentence.
When JNS asked the government why it made that choice, spokesman John Marzulli gave the answer that infuriates every victim's family I have ever sat across from: "We don't make statements about charging decisions. Those are internal deliberations." Translation: the most consequential decision in this prosecution — the one that pre-determined the sentence — will never be explained to the community that was targeted.
I have heard variations of that line in courtrooms and government offices for thirty years. It never gets less insulting.
The defense argued, not without some supporting documentation, that Sohail was in the grip of severe mental illness — PTSD and a personality disorder — and that his attack was "an irrational cry for help" rather than ideological hatred. I am not here to render a verdict on what was inside his head. That is precisely the point. Federal law does not require prosecutors to prove that a defendant woke up that morning with a manifesto. The statute requires that the property be targeted because of its religious character. A man who removes security barriers, drives into a synagogue five times on a major Jewish holiday, and was known to have had connections to that very Chabad community — that is a charging decision a serious prosecutor can make and defend.
They did not make it. The state hate-crime charges that were initially filed were dropped the moment Sohail entered his federal guilty plea. He walked away owing $19,000 in restitution — less than the cost of a mid-range used car — and a referral to mental health treatment.
This is not an isolated failure of nerve. The FBI's 2025 hate crime data, released by the ADL, recorded 1,528 anti-Jewish hate crime incidents — 63 percent of all religion-based hate crimes in the United States, from a community representing roughly 2 percent of the American population. The ADL noted that 2025 was "the deadliest year for antisemitic attacks in the Jewish diaspora in more than three decades." The prosecutors in Brooklyn were aware of this context. At sentencing, they themselves told the court that 80 of 146 hate crime incidents across New York City since the start of the year had targeted Jews and Jewish institutions. They cited the epidemic in their own sentencing memorandum. Then they asked a judge to remedy, through sentencing, a gap they had created through charging.
Yaacov Behrman, the Chabad liaison who was inside 770 that night, put the larger truth plainly: "Beyond this individual case, I am deeply concerned about the broader message the sentence sends, particularly at a time when Jewish people face growing danger around the world." He is right about the message. But the message was written the day the indictment was filed, not the day the sentence was handed down.
When a car rams a synagogue packed with two thousand worshippers on one of the most sacred dates of the Jewish year, the government owes that community more than a property charge and a closed file. At a minimum, it owes them an explanation. They will get neither. That silence, and what it signals to the next person contemplating an attack on a Jewish institution, is the real sentence being served here.