Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

"This case will not serve as a referendum on freedom of speech," acting U.S. Attorney Julia Dudley said. "This case is about innocent people being threatened, intimidated and extorted by a man that in most cases, they did not know and have never met."

The Roanoke Times | File October

William A. White is led into the Roanoke City Jail following a bond hearing in October on federal charges of encouraging violence against a juror. White was indicted Thursday in Roanoke on additional federal charges.

What happened

• The new charges against William A. White include five counts of threatening people, including nationally syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, one count of making a threat linked to extortion and one count of trying to intimidate witnesses in a federal lawsuit.
• Maximum sentences are five years in prison on each threat charge, 20 years on the extortion charge and 10 years on the witness intimidation charge, plus $250,000 fines on all counts.

What happens next

• The new charges won't be prosecuted until a federal charge White faces in Chicago is resolved.
• In that case, White is accused of encouraging violence against a juror. A trial is scheduled for March.
• Attorneys for White said they plan to ask that is case in Chicago be transferred to Roanoke, where it could be consolidated with the other cases.

Related

Video

• See video from the news conference

Documents

• Read the indictment against White handed down by a Roanoke federal grand jury (PDF, 3.28 MB)
Editor's note: These documents contains language that some readers might consider offensive.



Previous coverage

• White to be held without bond in Chicago (December 06, 2008)
• White pleads not guilty to charges in Chicago (November 13, 2008)
• Did neo-Nazi White go too far this time? (October 26, 2008)
• Neo-Nazi fails to persuade judge to release him (October 23, 2008)
• Roanoke white supremacist remains jailed (October 19, 2008)
• White's Web site closed by FBI (October 17, 2008)

After spewing hate from his Web site for years with no legal consequences, neo-Nazi leader William A. White has been charged for the second time in two months with crossing the line between free speech and threats.

White, who is awaiting trial in Chicago on a charge of encouraging violence against a juror, was accused Thursday of more threats and intimidation.

From behind his computer screen, White allegedly picked targets across North America: a bank employee in Kansas City, Mo., a human rights lawyer in Canada, a newspaper columnist in Maryland, a university administrator in Delaware, a small-town mayor in New Jersey and a group of tenants at an apartment complex in Virginia Beach.

All of them were strangers to one another and to White, united only by his contempt for blacks and Jews.

White's indictment is a major blow to the white supremacy movement nationwide, said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama organization that monitors hate groups.

"White has been seen as the leading threat-maker in the entire white supremacy scene for many years," Potok said. "He really specializes in pushing the First Amendment to its absolute limits."

In a seven-count indictment returned by a grand jury in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, White was charged with threatening or intimidating his victims by telephone, by e-mail and on the Internet, either on his Web site, overthrow.com, or in chat rooms frequented by white supremacists.

White has said his posts were satire and protected free speech -- a claim that federal prosecutors rejected during a news conference held Thursday to announce the indictments.

"This case will not serve as a referendum on freedom of speech," acting U.S. Attorney Julia Dudley said. "This case is about innocent people being threatened, intimidated and extorted by a man that in most cases, they did not know and have never met."

White, the self-proclaimed commander of the Roanoke-based American National Socialist Workers Party, was indicted Thursday as he sat in a Chicago jail.

The 31-year-old is awaiting trial on a separate charge of encouraging violence against a Chicago man who served on a jury that convicted a fellow white supremacist in 2004.

In that case and most of the ones included in the Roanoke indictment, White inserted himself into race-related disputes that he learned of through the news media, subjecting the people involved to verbal attacks, veiled threats and death wishes.

In one example cited in the indictment, White was angered when Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts, who lives in Maryland, wrote about public reaction to black-on-white crime.

"You and your fellow black filth are quickly losing ground," White wrote in an e-mail to Pitts, "and I look forward to the rapidly approaching day when whites once again rise up and slaughter and enslave your ugly race to the last man, woman and child. Itz [sic] coming."

Similar rhetoric appears throughout the 19-page indictment, which contains charges that could carry up to 55 years in prison if White is convicted.

White's Chicago attorneys described the charges as yet another effort by government officials to silence someone whose views they don't agree with.

Many of the comments attributed to White in court documents are partial quotes taken out of context, said Nishay Sanan, who represents White along with co-counsel Chris Shepherd.

"They're playing with words," Sanan said. "If you're picking and choosing the words that you want somebody to focus on, it's going to look like a threat."

But for some people -- including those in Roanoke who have been dealing with White since he arrived in town four years ago and began to buy up rental properties -- there's little doubt about his intentions.

Ever since White commented online in May that he had developed a detailed plan to murder several dozen of Roanoke's "Negro nuisances," people have expressed fears that their names might be on his list.

Daniel Hale, president of the Roanoke branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said he was pleased to see the charges against White but disappointed it took so long for authorities to act.

"It was allowed to fester, and the more it festered, the bolder he became," Hale said.

Thursday's indictment came less than a week after a federal judge in Chicago ordered White held without bond. White is charged in Chicago with posting a juror's address and telephone numbers on his Web site, which federal authorities say was an invitation for others to harm the man. The juror served in the case of neo-Nazi Matthew Hale, who was convicted of soliciting the murder of a federal judge.

The new charges against White cover incidents in which he allegedly made threats against Pitts and four other people:

-- A Citibank employee in Missouri during a dispute about a business account. Prosecutors say White threatened to make public the employee's personal information and mentioned the murder of a federal judge's family, saying "Lord knows that drawing too much publicity and making people upset" led to the murders. White also faces an extortion charge linked to the dispute.

-- An administrator at the University of Delaware, Kathleen Kerr, who oversaw a diversity seminar for students.

-- Richard Warman, a Canadian lawyer involved in an effort to shut down a Canada-based Web site that White administered.

-- Charles Tyson, who was the target of racial attacks after he became the first black mayor of South Harrison, a small New Jersey township.

White also is accused of trying to influence witness testimony by sending inflammatory letters to black tenants who were involved in a housing discrimination case against their landlord in Virginia Beach.

The charges against White followed a yearlong investigation by federal authorities in Roanoke, who were assisted by attorneys in the civil rights division of the U.S. Justice Department.

Potok called the case one of the government's most significant prosecutions of a white supremacist.

"By and large, it's been a hair or two short of being considered a threat under case law," he said of the individual postings. But when viewed collectively in the context of White's movement, Potok said, "I think there's very little question that he's encouraging people to go out and kill his enemies."