BY BILL DOLAN
bdolan@nwitimes.com
219.662.5328 | Thursday, September 11, 2008 | No comments posted.
CHICAGO | White supremacist Matthew Hale continues to file pleas in Hammond federal court to overturn his conviction and 40-year sentence for soliciting an FBI informant to murder a federal judge.
Hale, 37, who is being held at a federal prison in Florence, Colo., launched a new appeal this year alleging his 2004 trial was unjust because of mistakes by his defense lawyers.
Hale was the head of the World Church of the Creator, which preaches racial holy war against minorities. A jury convicted him of taking part in a plot to kill Illinois U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow. Lefkow had ordered Hale to stop using the name World Church of the Creator for his group because it was trademarked by an Oregon-based church group.
Hale faults his lawyers for allowing blacks and an assistant dean at Northwestern University with a black live-in boyfriend to serve on the jury.
One of Hale's racist associates, Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, went on a shooting spree in 1999 that killed two minorities, including Northwestern basketball coach Ricky Birdsong.
The Seventh Circuit Court denied an earlier appeal by Hale to win a new trial. U.S. District Court Judge James Moody, who presided over Hale's trial in Hammond, has yet to rule on the new appeal.
Source: NWITimes
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