Neighbor burns cross on Black family’s lawn in Virginia and gets prison time, feds say
A Virginia man faces time in federal prison after prosecutors said he admitted to burning a cross in the front yard of a Black family’s home last summer.
James Brown was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison on Aug. 20, four months after pleading guilty to charges related to the June 2020 incident, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia. The 41-year-old was accused of “using force or the threat of force to interfere with federally protected housing rights based on race,” among other charges, McClatchy News reported.
Prosecutors said Brown, who lived across the street from the victims, initially told federal agents he had nothing to do with the cross-burning — but later admitted to the act at a plea hearing, saying he did it to “threaten and intimidate” the family.
The victims, who weren’t publicly named, had organized a Black Lives Matter protest in Marion, Virginia, the day before, according to an indictment. Prosecutors said Brown was known to use racial slurs against the Black family and discussed the cross-burning with at least two witnesses.
“I did it,” Brown reportedly told a neighbor.
Other witnesses told police they saw a man matching Brown’s description fleeing the scene, McClatchy News reported, citing court documents.
“When Brown burned a cross in the victim’s front yard, he carried out a despicable act of intimidation, interfered with a federally protected housing right, and broke a serious federal law,” Acting U.S. Attorney Daniel P. Bubar said in a statement Friday. “Today’s sentence demonstrates that such threatening acts of hatred will be swiftly investigated and prosecuted.”
Brown’s sentence will be followed by three years of supervised release, court documents show.
This story was originally published August 25, 2021 at 9:03 AM with the headline "Neighbor burns cross on Black family’s lawn in Virginia and gets prison time, feds say."