Sentence in Cross-Burning Case Overruled

The Washington Post ^ | March 5, 2004 | Dan Eggen

[neverdem]

A federal appeals court sided with the Justice Department yesterday in overruling a North Carolina judge who had decided that a man convicted of cross-burning could avoid prison time because he had been provoked into the act.

Robert Nelson May and an accomplice were accused of erecting a cross 20 feet from the home of an interracial couple in Gastonia, N.C., and setting it on fire in 1999. Prosecutors said the pair sat in lawn chairs drinking beer while the cross burned. They had previously taunted the black victim verbally, using a racial epithet that they also wrote on a sign tacked to a tree.

May's accomplice pleaded guilty to racial intimidation and received probation in exchange for his testimony. May later pleaded guilty and faced as many as 18 months in jail.

[sauropod]

read later

[Eala]

Dang WaPo. I'd like to know how this was "provoked," and if it was on the couples' land, and....