“During the first eight months of fiscal year 2015, the federal government reported the convictions of eight individuals who had been charged with federal hate crimes under Title 8 Section 249 of the U.S. Code, according to the latest available data from the Justice Department. If this activity continues at the same pace, the annual total of convictions where a federal hate crime is listed as the lead charge will be twelve for this fiscal year. Since federal hate crime legislation was passed in 2009, there have been a total of 29 such federal convictions, according to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Of these, a guilty plea was entered for 25 defendants; the remaining four were convicted after a jury trial. The average prison sentence was 101 months or over 8 years. The median prison sentence — half got more, half less — was just 4 years (48 months). For more details including a timeline and counts by judicial district, see the report.”