Mississippi
Mississippi man sentenced to 42 months in prison for cross burning
A Mississippi man who burned a cross in his entrance yard to intimidate his Black neighbors was sentenced Thursday to 42 months in jail.
U.S. Southern District of Mississippi Decide 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 Honest Housing Act over a December 2020 incident during which he put collectively a wood cross in his entrance yard and propped it up so his Black neighbors may see it. He then doused it with motor oil and lit it on hearth. He additionally addressed the household with racially derogatory language, data say.
“This cross burning was an abhorrent act that used a conventional image of hatred and violence to stoke concern and drive a Black household out of their residence,” stated Assistant Legal professional Common Kristen Clarke of the Justice Division’s Civil Rights Division.
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This picture supplied by the Mississippi Division of Corrections reveals Axel Cox of Gulfport, Mississippi, who burned a cross in his entrance yard to intimidate his Black neighbors in December 2020, was sentenced on March 9, 2023, to 42 years in jail. (Mississippi Division of Corrections by way of AP, File)
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Clarke added, “Whereas one would possibly suppose cross-burnings and white supremacist threats and violence are issues of the previous, the unlucky actuality is that these incidents proceed at this time.”
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.”