U.S. v. William A. White

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Bios: Meet the people involved in the case
Timeline: Catch up on the backstory

Another charge has been dismissed against William A. White, an Internet hatemonger who continues to demonstrate the fine legal distinction between nuisance and danger.

Taking the unusual step of reversing a jury's verdict, U.S. District Judge James Turk acquitted White -- the self-proclaimed commander of a Roanoke-based neo-Nazi group -- of threatening a human rights lawyer from Canada.

The jury convicted White of three additional charges following an eight-day trial in December. Turk upheld those verdicts in a 32-page opinion made public on Thursday.

In defending himself against threat charges in Roanoke and Chicago, White, 32, has maintained that his rude and racist Internet postings are free speech protected by the First Amendment.

Five times out of eight, he prevailed. A federal judge in Chicago dismissed a charge against White last year, and Turk's decision clears the neo-Nazi of four of the seven charges he faced in Roanoke.

The outcome of each case has rested on a factual and legal analysis of what White said, and whether his actions crossed the line between protected speech and illegal threats.

In the case dismissed by Turk, White had been charged with threatening Ontario lawyer Richard Warman, who often brought legal action against white supremacists under Canada's human rights act.

In a post headlined "Kill Richard Warman," White wrote on his Web site that the lawyer should be "drug out into the street and shot, after appropriate trial by a revolutionary tribunal of Canada's white activists."

Another post, written in response to the firebombing of the home of a civil rights activist, proclaimed: "Good. Now somebody do it to Warman."

Unlike the other cases in which White had direct contact with his victims by e-mail or telephone, his comments about Warman were mostly restricted to online postings, Turk wrote in his opinion.

As such, White's words amounted to advocacy of violence, which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled is protected free speech -- unless it is intended to produce imminent lawless action.

"Permitting a conviction on such evidence as presented here [in the Warman case] would eviscerate the protections that the Supreme Court has steadfastly endorsed with respect to the mere advocacy of violence and forever blur, impermissibly, the line between protected and prohibited speech," Turk wrote.

Other actions by White, including the posting of Warman's home address and telephone number on his Web site, were not enough to sustain a charge of making a threat, the judge wrote.

White has argued that his remarks about Warman and other so-called "enemies of the white race" were political hyperbole and not intended to be taken seriously.

"Though the tone of White's postings could not be characterized as light-hearted jests, they are easily susceptible to characterization as mean-spirited ridicule and harassment, reminiscent of grade school bullying -- particularly White's comment that he disseminates Warman's address 'because it makes him so mad,' " Turk wrote.

The judge's decision upheld the remaining three convictions against White -- intimidating a group of apartment complex tenants in Virginia Beach and threatening a university administrator in Delaware and a bank employee in Missouri.

In all of the cases, White lashed out at total strangers after they did or said something that offended his racist views. A jury convicted White of the charges Dec. 18 following an eight-day trial in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.

The leader of the American National Socialist Workers Party, White has been described by a hate watch group as "possibly the loudest and most obnoxious neo-Nazi leader in America."

White is scheduled to be sentenced April 14. Although he faces up to 30 years in prison on the remaining charges, sentencing guidelines are likely to call for a lesser term.