A U.S. district judge imposed stiff sentences on five leaders of a Skinhead gang here last week, two months after they were convicted on charges of anti-Semitic and other racist violence.
An all-white jury found the live guilty of racially motivated hate crimes against minorities, in what the prosecution called a prolonged reign of terror in the summer of 1988.
It included attacks on a Jewish community center, vandalizing several synagogues and beating blacks and Hispanics in a Dallas park.
According to testimony, several of the defendants planned to pump poison gas into the air-conditioning vents of a local temple.
The five ringleaders were members of a gang called the Confederate Hammerskins.
Judge Barefoot Sanders pronounced prison sentences of from four to nine years on John Lance Gordon, 19; Scan Christian Tarrant, 20; Christopher Barry Greer, 25; Daniel Alvis Wood, 20; and Michael Lewis Lawrence, 22.
Wood and Jordan, also convicted of using a gun to commit a felony, drew additional mandatory five-year sentences for that offense.
Wood offered the FBI information in return for leniency. After sentencing, he gave the Nazi salute.
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.
