JACKSON, MS — An explosive federal hate crime case in Mississippi from 2011 has sparked charges against a mob of young Whites who confessed to harassing and assaulting Blacks in the town of Jackson. On Thursday, a sixth member of the group pleaded guilty to charges of a conspiracy to commit a hate crime in federal court.

The death of Black auto plant worker James Craig Anderson was the impetus behind charging 21-year-old Joseph Paul Dominick. The Rankin County man appeared in Jackson’s U.S. District Court as Judge Carlton Reeves announced the plans to sentence him at a later date.

Dominick, the ex-boyfriend of “American Idol” finalist Skylar Laine, is the sixth man of a group of White men and women to be charged with going into Jackson and attacking groups of Black people with slingshots and bottles.