Supremacist Guilty in Plot to Kill Judge

White supremacist Matthew Hale, who has called for a “holy war” against minorities, was convicted Monday of soliciting the murder of a federal judge.

Hale, 32, sat quietly in his orange prison jumpsuit, which he had insisted on wearing to protest his detention, as a jury found him guilty of four charges. He faces a maximum of 50 years in prison. No sentencing date has been set.

Hale’s attorney called no witnesses during the two-week trial, saying the prosecution’s case was flimsy and required no rebuttal. After the verdict, he expressed frustration -- not with the jurors but with the federal government.

Thomas Anthony Durkin suggested that prosecutors had been “out to get” his client since one of Hale’s followers, Benjamin Smith, killed two people and wounded nine others in a racially motivated 1999 rampage.

“I don’t think you can come away with any other sense than that [Hale] was prosecuted for his beliefs,” Durkin said.

The government insisted Monday that the case had nothing to do with Hale’s venomous preaching; it was about his actions, officials said.

“We’re not out to get anyone,” U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald said. “If people have hateful views and they don’t act upon them ... they have nothing to worry about.”

Hale’s trial hinged on a tape recording that his chief of security, Anthony Evola, secretly made in December 2002.

U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow had just ordered Hale’s organization -- then called the World Church of the Creator -- to change its name because it violated the trademark held by another group, based in Oregon.

A year earlier, Lefkow had ruled that Hale could keep the name. But a federal appeals court reversed her, and in November 2002 she told Hale that she had no choice but to order him to stop using World Church of the Creator on his website and in all printed material.

A few weeks later, the government said, Evola showed up at Hale’s home in East Peoria, Ill. Evola, the head of Hale’s “White Berets” security detail, also was an FBI informant; he had wired himself to record their talk.

“Are we gonna exterminate the rat?” Evola asked, referring to Lefkow.

“Well, whatever you want to do, basically,” Hale answered.

A few minutes later, Hale added: “My position has always been that, you know, I’m going to fight within the law and, but, ah [her home address has] been provided if you wish to, ah, do anything yourself, you can.... So that makes it clear.”

Evola responded: “Consider it done.”

“Good,” Hale said.

Prosecutors played that exchange for jurors, along with a dozen other tapes. Many featured Hale using racial slurs or laughing about Smith’s 1999 shootings of blacks, Asians and Jews. Smith killed himself as police closed in. Hale said at the time that the suicide was the only death he mourned, because the 11 people Smith killed and injured were subhuman “mud people,” unworthy of notice.

Durkin told the multiracial jury that he wouldn’t defend his client’s rhetoric.

Instead, the defense attorney argued that “the venom [Hale] spews” did not cross the line into criminal activity.

He insisted that the covert tapes showed Evola was trying to urge Hale to approve the judge’s slaying -- not the other way around. When Evola asked Hale for money -- and an alibi -- to help him commit the crime, for instance, Hale responded on tape: “I can’t be a party to such a thing.”

Prosecutors countered that Hale did nothing to discourage Evola from killing the judge. On the contrary, they said, he made it clear -- even as he disavowed illegal activity -- that he would approve of such a killing.

Lefkow was never attacked. She did install additional security after the government informed her that Hale had her home address.

In addition to the one count of soliciting murder, Hale was convicted of three counts of obstructing justice. He was acquitted of a second count of soliciting another church member to kill Lefkow.

The 12-member jury, which included five African Americans and one Latino, deliberated over three days before rendering its verdict in a packed, high-security courtroom. Spectators had to pass through two metal detectors to get in; a police dog patrolled the hall outside.

Hale showed little reaction as the verdicts were read. Outside, his lawyer said Hale was “very disappointed.” He vowed to appeal.

Hale, who has been jailed since his arrest 15 months ago, has renamed his organization the Creativity Movement. Experts on hate groups estimate he had a few hundred loyal followers, but said the verdict could be a powerful blow against the movement.

“Hale hailed himself as this new breed of white supremacist: One who was educated ... and knew how to skirt the law. But clearly, he didn’t,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.

“This is just another nail in the coffin among the hate-crime leadership in the United States,” Levin said. “They’re becoming incapacitated by death, old age or criminal convictions.”

But Devin Burghart, who heads an anti-bigotry group in Chicago, was less optimistic about the trial’s long-term effects. “This will throw things into disarray for a time,” said Burghart, head of the Center for New Community. “But eventually, they will likely find other fuhrers to follow.”

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Beckham reported from Chicago and Huffstutter from Lexington, Ky. Times staff writer Stephanie Simon in St. Louis contributed to this report.