Mississippi
Mississippi man gets 42 years in prison for cross burning
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi man who burned a cross in his entrance yard to intimidate his Black neighbors was sentenced Thursday to 42 years in jail.
U.S. Southern District of Mississippi Choose Sul Ozerden handed down the sentence after Axel Cox, 24, pleaded responsible to a federal hate crime in December.
Cox, of Gulfport, was charged with violating the Truthful Housing Act over a December 2020 incident through which he put collectively a picket cross in his entrance yard and propped it up so his Black neighbors might see it. He then doused it with motor oil and lit it on hearth. He additionally addressed the household with racially derogatory language, information say.
“This cross burning was an abhorrent act that used a standard image of hatred and violence to stoke concern and drive a Black household out of their house,” stated Assistant Legal professional Common Kristen Clarke of the Justice Division’s Civil Rights Division.
Clarke added, “Whereas one may suppose cross-burnings and white supremacist threats and violence are issues of the previous, the unlucky actuality is that these incidents proceed at present.”
The Ku Klux Klan and different white supremacist teams traditionally practiced cross burnings to intimidate Black and Jewish individuals.
A grand jury indicted Cox in September 2022. His legal professional, Jim Davis, filed a discover of intent for him to plead responsible to the cross burning in November. Davis didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark Thursday.
Davis informed the Biloxi Solar Herald that Cox was reacting to his neighbors allegedly capturing and killing his canine. He added that his consumer acted “completely inappropriately.”
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Michael Goldberg is a corps member for the Related Press/Report for America Statehouse Information Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit nationwide service program that locations journalists in native newsrooms to report on undercovered points. Comply with him on Twitter at twitter.com/mikergoldberg.