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			Civil Trial
	The Story     Synopsis   Civil Trial     Brown vs. Board of Education   The Filmmaker     Michael Chandler Interview     Michael Chandler Editorial		JURY HITS KLAN WITH $37 MILLION VERDICT   WELCH & COX ON TRIAL (L-R) MANNING, S.C. In the largest judgment ever awarded against a hate group, a jury here on July 24, 1998 ordered the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, its state leader and four other Klansmen to pay $37.8 million for their roles in a conspiracy to burn a black church. "That jury's decision was a day of reckoning for the Klan," said Morris Dees, the Southern Poverty Law Center's chief trial counsel and lead attorney for Macedonia Baptist Church, which was burned on June 21, 1995. "The verdict shows that there are still some things sacred in the country, still some lines that no one can cross." After a five-day trial, the jury assessed punitive damages of $15 million against the Klan's national organization, based in North Carolina; $15 million against Horace King, the Grand Dragon of the group's South Carolina chapter; and $7 million against the organization's South Carolina chapter. In addition, punitive damages were ordered against four Klansmen $100,000 against each of three men and $200,000 against a fourth who were earlier convicted of criminal charges in the case. The jury also assessed $300,000 in compensatory damages. The Christian Knights and King don't have millions of dollars. But the verdict will likely put the Klan out of business or severely diminish its influence and deter others from hate-inspired actions. Center attorneys plan to initiate legal procedures to attach bank accounts, property and other assets belonging to the Christian Knights and the five men. Any money collected will go to Macedonia Baptist Church. Testimony presented at the trial could spark criminal charges. Prosecutors who followed it told reporters there was a possibility that new evidence disclosed at the civil trial could bring additional indictments. GRAND DRAGON HORACE KING   Defense attorney Gary White painted King as a feeble old man merely exercising his right to free speech, saying King had not authorized the attack on the 125-year-old church. But witnesses told a different story, portraying King as a dynamic hatemonger who specifically spoke of burning churches and protecting his men from the law. The jury saw videotapes collected by the Center's Intelligence Project that showed King in his green Grand Dragon garb moving dramatically across a stage at a Klan rally. "This is a white man's country and if the niggers don't like it, put them on a rowboat and send them back to Africa to swing from coconut trees and eat one another," King shouted at a videotaped Klan rally two weeks before the Macedonia fire. Another tape showed King at a Klan march in Washington, D.C., yelling, "If we had this garbage in South Carolina, we would burn the bastards out..." Testimony showed that King portrayed black churches as demonic. He told his followers that black churches were plotting against white America. Witnesses said that King and his followers were particularly infuriated after members of Macedonia's congregation complained to police about the Klan's nearby rallies. Racial epithets blasted over Klan loudspeakers could be heard during Macedonia's church services. After the complaints, police ordered the Klan to turn its loudspeakers down. Other evidence showed King authorized attacks on black churches: Marion Frieson, a man who attended a Klan rally near Macedonia, said he overheard a conversation involving King and Ed Garvin, the Clarendon County Klan leader serving under King. "I heard Ed Garvin say, 'Hell, let's burn a church. There's one right down the road," Frieson told the jury. In response, he added, "Horace King said, 'There'll be protection for you fellows if you need it." Gary Christopher Cox and Timothy Adron Welch, the two Klansmen convicted of actually setting the fires at Macedonia and another black church, said they spoke with King and other Klan officials about burning churches at a Klan rally a few weeks before the Macedonia attack. Cox testified that he was ready to burn a church that night but was told to wait to avoid bringing suspicion on the Klan. Both Welch and Cox testified that King promised them assistance should they be caught. The next month, he and Welch burned Mount Zion A.M.E. and Macedonia Baptist on succeeding nights. After arrests in the fires at Macedonia and another black church, local Klan official Arthur Haley said king told him, "Deny that you know them boys, and tear their [membership] cards up." Another witness said King called a special meeting to give similar instructions to other Clarendon County Klan members. Thomas Smith, a former reporter for the Richland County weekly The Star-Reporter, said he infiltrated the Christian Knights after the fire. Smith testified that King told him that a "race war" was coming by the year 2000 and then spoke specifically of black churches, saying, "The only good nigger church is a burned nigger church." In a related matter, Clayton "Eddy" Spires, facing charges in the 1996 drive-by shooting of a black nightclub in Pelion, S.C., said King ordered that attack. He said that King told him he had influence and could protect him from prosecution. Things did not go smoothly for the defense. At one point, a defense witness, Dean Williams, identified himself as a State Law Enforcement Department employee and said that King was peaceful and cooperative with police. But on cross-examination, Williams admitted that he was merely a paid informant and was a former member of the Klan group responsible for killing four girls in a 1963 Birmingham, Ala., church bombing. In addition to Dees, Center attorneys presenting the Macedonia case were litigation director Richard Cohen and Marcia Bull Stadeker. Columbia lawyers Tom Turnipseed and Pete Tapley served as local counsel and provided invaluable assistance throughout the litigation. Senator John Land and his daughter Ricci Land Welch of Manning also served as local counsel and assisted Center attorneys at the trial. The South Carolina verdict was the latest in a series of cases against hate groups brought by Center attorneys. In 1990, White Aryan Resistance and its members were ordered to pay $12.5 million to the family of Mulugeta Seraw. In 1988, a jury assessed nearly $1 million against a Klan group who attacked a group of interracial marchers in Forsyth County, Ga. In 1987, the family of Michael Donald won a $7 million judgment from the Klan group that lynched him in Mobile, Ala. And in 1990, a case brought against a Klan group that attacked peaceful marchers in Decatur, Ala., was resolved when Klansmen agreed to pay damages, perform community service and attend a race relations course taught by their victims. Nine Klansmen were later convicted of criminal charges. In 1996, members of Macedonia Baptist Church rebuilt their church, located on a peaceful country road about 10 miles outside of Manning. They never let the hate that burned their 138-year-old church consume them. They have not forgotten the vision of their church in flames, but they have forgiven those who burned it. "Hate is useless, it is just useless," said Macedonia pastor the Rev. Jonathan Mouzon after the trial was over. He said he offers up his own prayers for the Klansmen. Used by permission Southern Poverty Law Center ©1999

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