Roanoke Not Bound By Chicago Ruling

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White's life on fringe puts him at center of storm
The Roanoke neo-Nazi's ideological leanings were foreshadowed by his early feelings of "innate superiority."
By Laurence Hammack

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Roanoke case
By Laurence Hammack
981-3239

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White's life on fringe puts him at center of storm
When William A. White returns to Roanoke, he will face more federal charges of using the Internet to make racially inspired threats.

Last week in Chicago, a federal judge dismissed a charge that White solicited violence against a juror who had voted to convict a fellow white supremacist. White had posted the juror's name, photograph, address and telephone numbers on his Web site, overthrow.com.

Although White made no direct threats, prosecutors maintained he meant the juror harm by publishing his whereabouts, knowing that his online audience included racists prone to violence. White's intent was shown by other passages from overthrow.com in which he advocated violence, the government argued.

U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman ruled that because White did not provoke "imminent lawless action," his writings were protected free speech.

However, a district court opinion from Chicago will have no binding impact on additional charges that await White in Roanoke, according to Wat Hopkins, a communications law professor at Virginia Tech.

In Roanoke, White faces a different charge of making threats by interstate communication. And unlike in the Chicago case, he is charged with contacting his targets directly and using what might be construed as more threatening language.

White is accused of using e-mail, the Internet and the telephone to threaten various people: 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 apartment complex tenants in Virginia Beach.

In one case, White became angry over a column that Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts wrote about black-on-white crime.

"I look forward to the rapidly approaching day when whites once again rise up and slaughter and enslave your race to the last man, woman and child. Itz coming," White wrote in an e-mail to Pitts.

White refused to remove Pitt's address and telephone numbers from his Web site, according to the indictment. "Frankly, if some loony took the info and killed him, I wouldn't shed a tear," he wrote in an e-mail to the newspaper's editor. "That also goes for your whole newsroom."

Brian Levin, a California lawyer who heads the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, agreed with Hopkins that Adelman's ruling will not affect the Roanoke case.

"However, that doesn't mean the Virginia case is wholly immune from First Amendment attack," Levin said. "While the law is reasonably clear, the facts of each case simply allow wiggle room that allows each side to make a plausible argument."

White remained in a Chicago jail Friday, waiting for a bond hearing to be scheduled.