The trial of white supremacist Tom Metzger got under way in Los Angeles County Superior Court last week, after a full week of jury selection and almost eight years after he and three other defendants joined in a cross-burning ceremony, allegedly to provoke a violent clash and intimidate blacks in a racially mixed community.
Although the charges against Metzger consist only of one felony and two misdemeanor counts of violating the municipal fire code, unlawful burning and unlawful assembly, the trial of the former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon and current leader of the White Aryan Resistance movement is receiving widespread media coverage.
The case has taken an unusually long time to come to trial, in part because the charges were first dismissed, then reinstated on appeal.
Originally, 15 men were arrested for participating in the burning of three 15-foot-high crosses, but charges against several were dropped.
The cross-burning took place in a canyon overlooking the community of Lake View Terrace, in the foothills of the San Fernando Valley, adjoining Los Angeles. An otherwise little-known town, Lake View Terrace has also been in the news as the site of the videotaped beating by white policemen of black motorist Rodney King.
As it happened, the cross-burning was also videotaped, in this case by a free-lance journalist who had infiltrated the Aryan warriors. The tape, to be introduced into evidence later in the trial, shows robed participants raising their arms in Nazi salutes, as one of their leaders intones:
“So long as the alien occupies your land, hate is your law, and revenge is your first duty. We light these crosses in the name of God, over the luciferin scum of the earth.”
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Jury selection was a dragged-out process, as scores of prospective jurors were eliminated because of their stated revulsion of the KKK.
Attorneys traded charges of trying to racially tilt the makeup of the jury, with the defense accusing the prosecution of arbitrarily removing whites, while prosecutors charged that the defendants were attempting to keep minorities off the panel.
One question submitted by a defense attorney asked: “A belief held by some people in this country is that there was no deliberate and systematic killing of Jews by the Nazis during the 1930s and World War II. Do you agree or disagree with this belief and why?”
Final selection yielded a jury of six white women and six members of minority groups.
One uninvited participant in the proceedings was Irv Rubin, head of the Jewish Defense League, who got into a shouting match with one of the defendants outside the courtroom.
Just before the start of the trial on Aug. 7, Judge J.D. Smith was asked to investigate an accusation that Rubin had biased jury members.
A prospective juror told the court that he observed Rubin, in a courthouse elevator, talking to a juror about the criminal record of one of the defendants.
The juror was called into Smith’s chambers, but was allowed to stay on the panel after stating that he was not influenced by Rubin’s statements.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
