Macedonia Baptist Church v. Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, et al.
"The Church Arson Trial"
Klan found liable in black church fire, ordered to pay $37.8 million in damages
MANNING, SOUTH CAROLINA, July 24 (Court TV) -- The Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were found liable in the fire that destroyed the predominantly black Macedonia Baptist Church in 1995 and was ordered to pay $37.8 million in damages.
Jurors deliberated only 45 minutes before reaching their decision. Lawyers representing the Macedonia Baptist Church had asked the jury to award $25 million in punitive damages and $200,000 in actual damages (the cost to rebuild the church) against the Klan.
The jury ordered the North Carolina Christian Knights and King to pay $15 million each. South Carolina Christian Knights was ordered to $7 million while Timothy Welch, Christopher Cox and Arthur Haley must pay $100,000 each. Herbert Rowell was ordered to pay $200,000.
In his closing statement, plaintiff attorney Morris Dees told jurors that the Klan and its leaders, Horace King and Virgil Griffin, encouraged violence against blacks and created an environment that led the fire that destroyed the Macedonia church in 1995. Two of their former Klan members, Timothy Welch and Christopher Cox, pleaded guilty to setting the fire and testified this week that King and the Klan encouraged them to beat up blacks, telling them that they would be protected from the law.
"That's the enemy, sitting right over there," Dees said, pointing at King, the Grand Dragon of South Carolina's Klan. "That's the evil. If Horace king would look at his Bible, he would see what the wages of sin are."
The defendants had claimed that they never encouraged violence against anyone and never told Welch and Cox to set fire to any black churches. They insisted that Welch and Cox acted on their own, that destroying churches was against their Christian beliefs. King repeatedly denied preaching violence when he took the stand during trial. But Dees impeached King's testimony by showing him and the jurors videos of him at Klan rallies calling blacks "niggers" who needed to be burned out of South Carolina and sent on a rowboat back to Africa.
Defendant lawyer Gary White III tried to convince jurors in his closing statement that the Klan was not part of a conspiracy to burn black churches and harm blacks. He insisted that the Macedonia fire was an isolated incident of which King and the Klan had no prior knowledge. King and the Klan, he inferred, were under attack for their unpopular beliefs.
"I'm going to ask you all not to answer hatred with hatred," White said. "I'm not asking you to like Horace King. I don't expect you to. I hope you don't like what he stands for. I don't like what he stands for."
This victory marks Dees' latest victory for himself and his Southern Poverty Law Center against the Klan. In 1997, he won an $8 million verdict against the United Klans of America over a 1981 lynch-style murder of a black teen-ager in Alabama. The verdict bankrupted that Klan group.
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