Metzger, 2 Others Get 6-Month Jail Terms : Prejudice: White supremacists are also ordered to perform community service for 1983 cross-burning incident.

White supremacist Tom Metzger and two co-defendants were sentenced Monday to six months in jail for their role in a 1983 cross-burning in a racially mixed San Fernando Valley neighborhood.

Metzger, convicted in October of misdemeanor unlawful assembly, also was ordered to perform 200 hours of community service near his home in San Diego County with organizations that work with minorities or in a hospital. He was fined $200.

It was Metzger’s first criminal conviction in years of white supremacist activities, and the first time he will have been sent to jail.

“We realize now that the white separatist movement and people who stand up for white working people, . . . who don’t apologize for their beliefs, are going to be hammered all the way down the line,” Metzger told reporters after the sentencing.

“But nothing is going to change,” the former grand dragon of the California Ku Klux Klan added. “Each time they knock one of us down, there are a thousand more who will rise up.”

In addition to the six-month jail term, Metzger co-defendants Stanley Witek, reputed leader of a neo-Nazi party, and Brad Kelly were ordered to perform 300 hours of community service at a Watts agency, the Watts Labor Community Action Committee. They were fined $300.

All three men were placed on three years’ probation.

Superior Court Judge J.D. Smith, comparing neo-Nazis and the KKK to notorious street gangs such as the Crips and Bloods, said the behavior of Metzger and the other participants in the cross-burning was “repugnant.”

“A gang is a gang,” Smith said. “What they did was wrong.”

Smith said his sentence was designed, in part, to force men who preached separatism to “intermingle” with minorities.

A fourth defendant, Erich Schmidt, is expected to receive a similar sentence once his attorney recovers from heart surgery. Schmidt, Witek and Kelly were convicted of a felony conspiracy count and the misdemeanors of unlawful burning and unlawful assembly.

A jury on Oct. 28, after six days of deliberation, failed to reach a verdict on a more serious felony charge for Metzger, as well as the unlawful burning misdemeanor. The jury was declared hung after voting 10 to 2 for acquittal.

Before sentencing Monday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Dale Davidson asked the court to retry Metzger on the two undecided counts, saying he would prove that Metzger was a leader behind the cross-burning ceremony. Smith denied the motion, and denied a defense motion for a new trial.

Smith noted that it was eight years ago today that the case began. Metzger and his co-defendants were among 15 people arrested the night of Dec. 3, 1983, during a ceremony in which participants erected and set ablaze three towering crosses on private property in the Kagel Canyon area near Lake View Terrace.

The ritual was captured on videotape by a free-lance journalist who infiltrated the group. In the tape, the participants are seen donning KKK-style robes and hoods, chanting racist slogans and raising their arms in Nazi salutes.

Metzger, who has maintained that he was being prosecuted for his unpopular beliefs, accused the judge of imposing a stiff sentence as a way to boost his campaign for district attorney. Smith, who plans to announce his candidacy for Ira Reiner’s job next month, denied that politics had anything to do with his order.

In speaking to reporters outside the courtroom, Metzger hesitated when asked whether he will obey the terms of his probation. Under the court’s order, Metzger and his co-defendants must not associate with Klan, Aryan or similar supremacist groups.

“You mean I can’t support David Duke?” he asked.

Metzger heads a group called the White Aryan Resistance, which advocates separation of the races and spreads its message through a cable television program called “Race and Reason,” an international fax network and speeches.

He said he is not afraid to go to jail, and it is unclear whether additional security measures will be put in place for him. Metzger, Witek and Kelly are scheduled to begin serving their time Jan. 6.

While this is Metzger’s first criminal conviction, he and his son, John, were held liable in a civil suit for the beating death of an Ethiopian immigrant killed by skinheads in Oregon. He has had to sell his Fallbrook home to help pay the $12.5-million judgment.

In the criminal case, defense attorneys vowed that they will appeal the convictions and argued that their clients did not deserve to go to jail.

Metzger, addressing the court, asked that he be allowed to remain free to attend to his sick wife. He said terms of the probation are unfair attempts to strip him of the right to engage in political activity.

In the nine-week trial, prosecutors had argued that the cross-burning ceremony was staged to incite violence and terrorize residents. The defendants maintained that they were holding a memorial to a white police officer allegedly slain by a black suspect.

Rejecting the defendants’ explanation, the judge said he knew the policeman in question, and that he would be “rolling over in his grave” at that claim.

Meanwhile, at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, where Metzger’s co-defendants were ordered to perform community service, officials were learning the news from reporters.

“It should be interesting,” administrative assistant Teryl Watkins said. “It will be a learning process for them.”

Watkins said the agency frequently receives defendants who are ordered to perform community service. The center, she said, takes such orders seriously and keeps time cards for those completing community service.

“It’s not something they can skate by on,” she said.