Judge Visits Site of Supremacists’ Cross Burning

As a goat pranced to and fro behind him, Los Angeles Municipal Judge Larry Paul Fidler held court Thursday on the spot in Kagel Canyon where white supremacists burned crosses more than three years ago.

Seven men are charged with violating the city fire code while participating in the burning of three crosses on Dec. 3, 1983, leading to a lengthy series of legal proceedings, including the current preliminary hearing before Fidler.

Fidler ordered the outdoor session because defense attorneys asked that he visit the cross-burning site in the Angeles National Forest east of Sylmar.

The goat happened to be tethered to a nearby tree as Fidler viewed the site before an entourage that included eight attorneys, a court reporter, six of the seven defendants and news reporters.

Fidler is to decide whether there is enough evidence to hold the defendants--including a former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon and the founder of the National Socialist Aryan Workers Party--for trial.

They are charged with conspiring to burn waste materials without a permit, unlawful assembly, carrying night sticks and wearing a disguise during a crime.

Called Private Gathering

The defense has argued that the burning of the crosses was merely a private gathering in honor of a white Los Angeles police officer who was killed by a black man. The defendants say they are being singled out for prosecution because of their political beliefs.

Prosecutors say there is nothing political about the case. They contend that the men, who had obtained a barbecue permit, deliberately burned the crosses despite being told by police that the permit would not prevent them from being arrested.

In an attempt to prove the gathering was an unlawful assembly, prosecutors have argued that the group intended to make a public display of the event, and they have presented testimony from neighbors who said they were angered when they saw the burning crosses.

The crosses were burned on property owned by Thomas Miner, a seventh defendant who is being sought for not appearing at the hearing.

Judge Fidler briefly held court in the dry, weed-covered yard at the base of an embankment off Kagel Canyon Road. The judge examined what prosecutors said were the charred remnants of the crosses.

Kevin S. Avery, a defense lawyer, said in an interview that the visit to the site showed the cross burning was essentially a private gathering.

“The neighbors who were supposedly scared out of their wits were 800 yards away. All you could see from that distance would be a flame,” Avery said. “To say that the neighbors, by the mere appearance of this flame, were intimidated or terrorized is pure folly.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Dale A. Davidson said afterward he did not oppose the visit to the cross-burning site because he wanted the judge to see that burning a cross on the site posed a fire hazard to nearby homes.

“It shows clearly to me that they were burning the fires to incite the neighborhood,” Davidson said.

The defendants are Tom Metzger, Stanley Witek, Brad Kelly, Irvin Alcorn, Erich Schmidt, Winston Burbage and Miner. Metzger is a former California grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. Witek founded the National Socialist Aryan Workers party.