The Roanoke Times | File 2008

In an opinion issued Tuesday in Chicago, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman ruled that Bill White's actions were protected by the First Amendment.

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• View the judge's opinion dismissing the indictment against Bill White

Previous coverage

• Judge in neo-Nazi's trial recuses himself
• Neo-Nazi leader's trial to begin July 27
• Neo-Nazi White asks for new judge
• Roanoke neo-Nazi faces new charges
• Feds: Roanoke neo-Nazi threatened prosecutors, FBI agents
• Ruling clears way for neo-Nazi trial
• Did Neo-Nazi White go too far this time?
• Neo-Nazi fails to persuade judge to release him
• Roanoke white supremacist remains jailed
• White's Web site closed by FBI

Long known for dancing along the line between free speech and illegal threats, Roanoke neo-Nazi leader William A. White has won the first round of his bout with the federal government.

In an opinion issued Tuesday in Chicago, U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman dismissed a charge that White used his Web site to encourage violence, ruling that his actions were protected by the First Amendment.

White had been charged with posting the name, address and telephone number of the foreman of a Chicago jury that convicted a fellow white supremacist in 2004.

Although the post made no direct threats against the juror, federal prosecutors had argued that White published the information with the hope it would prompt readers of his racist Web site, overthrow.com, to threaten or harm the man. In an attempt to prove that intent, authorities filled the indictment against White with examples of other, more hateful and inflammatory posts.

But White broke no laws in obtaining information about the juror, Adelman wrote in a 35-page opinion. As for using passages from overthrow.com to interpret White's motives, "an intimidating context alone does not remove the protection of the First Amendment," the judge ruled.

White, commander of the Roanoke-based American National Socialist Workers Party, remains in jail despite the judge's opinion, his immediate fate unknown.

The 32-year-old faces federal charges in Roanoke of making online threats against a half-dozen or so targets, including a civil rights lawyer in Canada, a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist and a mayor in New Jersey.

He is expected to raise the same free-speech defense to those charges.

"The First Amendment is at its best when it protects unpopular speech," said Chris Shepherd, one of White's Chicago attorneys. "If the First Amendment only protected us from expressing opinions that everyone agrees with, it would become useless."

Legal experts have said in the past that White is adept at pushing his constitutional rights to their absolute limit by airing implied threats and death wishes to those he sees as adversaries to the white supremacy movement.

Federal prosecutors offered little comment Tuesday.

"We are reviewing the opinion and we will consider our options," said Carol Blue, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago. Prosecutors could appeal the judge's decision and ask that White remain locked up in the meantime, Shepherd said.

Ever since federal agents arrested White in October and shut down overthrow.com, the case against him has been viewed by many as a close call: protecting the public from possible harm versus protecting the rights of a racist to speak his mind.

"It is a very interesting legal issue as to whether the language used in this case constitutes a true threat," Magistrate Judge Michael Urbanski said during a bond hearing for White in Roanoke last year.

Although Urbanski ordered White held without bond, he cited online writings that were not part of the indictment -- including White's self-described urge to "kill, kill, kill" and a passage stating that he had developed a "very intricate plot for the murder of about a score of Roanoke city's Negro nuisances and their annoying counterparts at The Roanoke Times."

After White was shipped off to Chicago to stand trial, a federal judge rejected his first attempt to have the case dismissed on free-speech grounds. In January, Judge William Hibbler ruled that White "stepped beyond the protection of the First Amendment" when he included the juror's personal contact information along with postings that advocated violence against others.

The following month, federal prosecutors revised the indictment against White to include his public praise for the murder of a Chicago judge's mother and husband in 2005.

After all the federal judges in Chicago stepped aside, White's case was assigned to Adelman, who sits in Milwaukee. Defense attorneys filed a second motion in May to dismiss the charge that was identical to the earlier one -- but with the opposite result.

Adelman's decision to dismiss the charges comes just a few weeks before White's trial was scheduled to begin in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

"The court recognizes that the [First] Amendment's protections are not absolute," Adelman wrote, citing a U.S. Supreme Court case that prohibits speech which advocates violence with the intent of producing "imminent lawless action."

Yet nowhere in White's post did he "expressly advocate that [the juror] be harmed" or threaten him personally, Adelman wrote. As for White's portrayal of the juror as a "gay anti-racist" who lives with his "gay black lover," those comments were protected free speech, the judge ruled.

The overthrow.com passage that led to White's arrest stemmed from the neo-Nazi's belief that Matthew Hale, a fellow white supremacist, was unfairly convicted in 2004 of plotting to have a federal judge in Chicago killed.

In their motion to dismiss the charge, Shepherd and co-counsel Nishay Sanan pointed out that nothing happened to the juror during the five weeks between White's post and his arrest.

"Lacking lawless action for five weeks, it requires a tortuous interpretation of clear-cut facts of this case to claim that the speech was likely to produce imminent lawless actions," the attorneys wrote.

It was unclear Tuesday what impact Adelman's ruling will have on the pending charges against White in Virginia. Brian McGinn, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Roanoke, declined to comment.

White faces charges here of making threats by interstate communications. Some legal observers have said prosecutors may have decided to bring the Chicago charge first because it contains an additional element -- obstruction of justice in the form of trying to influence a juror -- that might have bolstered their case. However, some of the online language cited in the Roanoke indictment contains more direct comments toward the targets than what was used in the Chicago case.