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CHICAGO, April 27, 2004 (Portland Press Herald) — White supremacist leader Matthew Hale, who helped organize an anti-Somali gathering in Maine last year, was convicted Monday of trying to have a federal judge killed. Hale, 32, was found guilty of four of the five charges against him. He was acquitted on one of two counts of soliciting the murder of a federal judge in Chicago. The judge was not attacked.
Prosecutors said during the trial that Hale was furious after U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow ordered him to stop using the name World Church of the Creator. The judge ruled the name had been trademarked by an Oregon-based religious group that has no ties to Hale.
His arrest in January 2003 prevented him from attending the anti-Somali gathering in Lewiston a few days later, where he was scheduled to give a speech titled "The Invasion of Maine by Somalis and How We Can End It." Only 32 people showed up, while more than 4,000 gathered at a counter-rally urging Mainers to reject racism and embrace the state's new wave of immigrants.
More than 1,100 Somalis have moved to Lewiston from other U.S. cities since February 2001. They were attracted by cheaper housing, lower crime and more accessible public services. Most are Muslims who escaped clan warfare that has devastated their East African country.
On Monday, Hale sat with his clasped hands on a table as the verdicts were read. He dipped his head slightly but showed no other reaction.
Hale never testified during the two-week trial, and chief defense counsel Thomas Anthony Durkin called no witnesses, saying the prosecution's evidence was the weakest he had seen in a major case.
The defense argued that Hale never asked anyone to kill the judge and that the FBI used an informant to draw him into a murder plot.
During the trial, jurors heard more than a dozen tapes of Hale using racial slurs, including one in which he laughs about the 1999 shooting rampage by one of his followers, Benjamin Smith. Targeting minorities, Smith killed two people, including former Northwestern University basketball coach Ricky Byrdsong.
U.S. District Judge James T. Moody did not immediately set a sentencing date.
Solicitation of murder carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Hale could also get a maximum of 10 years on each of three counts of obstruction of justice.
Hale's group was founded in 1973 and has had at most a few hundred members in about 22 states, experts say. The group followed "The White Man's Bible," which prosecutors say preaches "racial holy war."
Those followers have largely scattered since his arrest 15 months ago. But Ian Sigel, Midwest director of the Jewish Defense League, said they easily could have found another supremacist organization to join.
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