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.
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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.
