A judge sentenced the main assailant in the Howard Beach baseball bat attack to 15 years in prison yesterday and applauded the state’s decision to try the case as a hate crime.

Nicholas Minucci, who is white, was convicted last month of robbery and assault as hate crimes for the June 29,2005, attack of a black man, Glenn Moore.

Judge Richard Buchter of state Supreme Court in Queens said Minucci had reason to believe Mr. Moore was planning to steal a car that night. Nonetheless, the judge said Minucci’s use of a racial epithet sent a message that the black victim “was not welcome and had no right being in the defendant’s neighborhood.”

“He repeatedly used the n-word in a manner and way that can be best described as an affront to Glenn Moore’s worth as a human being,” Judge Buchter said. Minucci, 20, had faced between eight and 25 years in prison. Prosecutors spoke yesterday of Minucci’s past trouble with the law, saying he had thrown paintballs at Sikhs and had received probation for a stabbing.

Minucci sounded unrepentant as he delivered a bitter and defiant speech —the first time he has spoken of his crime in court. He accused the Queens district attorney, Richard Brown, of prosecuting an ordinary street fight as a racial crime.

He blamed the charges against him on an event that happened when he was only an infant — the attack in Howard Beach that ended with a black man being killed when he was hit by a passing car as he fled his white assailants.

“This is a hate crime because it happened in Howard Beach.” Minucci said. “Many black people think I’m racist now because of the way the D.A. has made me look. They think I’m a monster, which I’m not.”

Judge Buchter said the hate crime charges were consistent with the evidence in the case. He declared that “our hope for a fair society depends in part on our commitment to stand firm” against crimes motivated by bigotry.

Minucci left Mr. Moore with a fractured skull when he hit him in the head with a baseball bat last year. A second man, Anthony Ench, has already been sentenced to two years in prison for his role in the attack.

Mr. Moore, 23, yesterday told the court that the attack had caused him “to feel anger and be uncomfortable around people of the opposite race.”