White supremacist sentenced to 42 months for inciting violence against juror
BY KIM JANSSEN Federal Courts Reporter kjanssen@suntimes.com February 20, 2013 11:39AM
White supremacist William White is led into jail after appearing before federal magistrate judge in Roanoke, Va., in 2008 for a bond hearing. On Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013, a federal judge in Chicago sentenced White to 3 1/2 years in prison. File
Updated: March 22, 2013 10:26AM
A neo-Nazi who incited violence against a juror in a Chicago trial was sentenced to 31/2 years behind bars Wednesday by a federal judge who said the white supremacist “hasn’t developed respect for the law,” despite repeated run-ins with authorities.
William White, 35, of Roanoke, Va., used his extremist website overthrow.com to post the name, address and phone numbers of the jury foreman in the trial of Matthew Hale, a fellow white supremacist convicted of attempting to have Judge Joan Lefkow assassinated in 2005.
The juror was a “gay anti-racist . . . who played a key role in convicting Matt Hale,” White wrote on Sept. 11, 2008, listing the juror’s personal and professional contact details and writing that he lived with a black lover. White had claimed in another post on his website that everyone involved in the Hale case deserved to be assassinated.
When Lefkow’s husband and mother were killed by a disgruntled litigant unconnected to any hate group, White even wrote “Good for them!”
In court Wednesday, a balding, bespectacled White gave a half-hearted apology for “causing the situation that brings me here today.”
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Ferrara said, “The system of justice would collapse if regular citizens could not do their jury duty without fear of this type of reprisal.”
