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Lawyers hope to seize Klan property for award in church burning
Updated November 10, 1998
4:50 p.m. ET
SUMTER, S.C. (Court TV) — The Macedonia Baptist Church, which struggled to rebuild after its church building was burned down, and the Southern Poverty Law Center hope to seize the assets of a local Ku Klux Klan chapter as part of the $21.5 million award they won in court.
A judge set that amount after determining that the original $37.8 million awarded to them by a South Carolina jury earlier this year was excessive.
The church won't contest the new ruling against the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, said Richard Cohen, legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"The fact that these defendants don't have the means to pay the fines imposed doesn't mean no fine should be imposed," Cohen said
Monday. "Both the judge and the jury said we need to put a high
penalty on this kind of behavior."
The center has a long-standing reputation of using the legal system to deprive hate groups of their assets, including a a 1987 judgment
that bankrupted the United Klans of America in Mobile, Ala..
The church won the money this past July after proving that Klan members conspired to burn the church building down in June 1995. Klan members' defense strategies were severely weakened when SPLC lawyers produced videotaped evidence showing the defendants spewing racial epithets and other inflammatory statements at a Klan rally. The Klan appealed the ruling in September and asked for a new trial. The trial judge denied the request but reduced the size of the
judgment.
The suit also named the Klan group's state leader, Horace King, and four other members as defendants. King maintains he'll never be able to make even a small dent in the total amount of the judgment.
"I'm a poor man, I couldn't pay it if it was only one million
dollars," he said Monday.
King never faced criminal charges, but lawyers for the church were able to convince the jury that his words and actions prompted the other four Klan members to burn the church. The four former Klansmen are serving federal prison sentences for the 1995 arson.
"The judge knows and the jury knew that the Klan didn't have
$37 million," Cohen said. "They know they don't have $21.5
million. But there was still an important objective to be served
and that was to set an example and deter future actions."
"The defendants were, in starkest terms, trying to foment a
race war," Cohen said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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