CAMPAIGN ’88 : 2 Deny Jackson Plot

A couple accused of being part of a white-supremacist conspiracy to kill Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson pleaded innocent to all charges Monday in St. Louis. The federal court scheduled trial for July 18.

Londell Williams, 30, and his wife, Tammy Williams, 27, each dressed in T-shirts and jeans, appeared in handcuffs before U.S. District Judge Edward Filippine.

Londell Williams is charged in a four-count indictment, handed down Thursday, with threatening to kill and inflict bodily harm on Jackson, possession of an unregistered AR-15 rifle that had been reconverted to automatic action, threatening to injure an informant and intimidating the informant.

Tammy Williams is not charged with threatening Jackson, but is named in the other three counts.

The penalty for threatening Jackson is a prison term of no more than three years and a fine of up to $250,000. The other counts carry up to a 10-year prison term each, and up to a $250,000 fine.

The charges are based in part on tape-recorded conversations in which Londell Williams is alleged to have said that the white supremacist group the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord was plotting to kill Jackson because the black candidate was “getting too close to being President of the United States.”

The weapon mentioned in the indictment against the couple was found buried in the woods in Franklin County by authorities.

Officials said, however, that Williams passed a polygraph interview in which he denied membership in the CSA or The Order, another white supremacist group. In a telephone call to a St. Louis television station last week, Williams denied membership in either group and denied he was involved in a plot to kill Jackson.