Court Throws Out Sentence in Cross Case

RICHMOND, Va. - A federal appeals court on Thursday threw out a probation sentence given to a North Carolina man convicted of burning a cross near the home of an interracial couple while brandishing a gun, agreeing with prosecutors who said the penalty was too light.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Robert Nelson May to return to a lower court for resentencing. He pleaded guilty last year to racial intimidation for threats made against Anthony Sanders, who is black, and Jacquelette Paige Williams, who is white.

May was given a one-month jail sentence, with credit for time served, plus two years of probation.

A lower-court judge determined that May deserved a sentence less than the guidelines of 18 months to two years in prison because he had been provoked when one of the victims made an obscene gesture.

But the appeals court rejected that reasoning, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that cross-burning demonstrated "that the possibility of injury or death is not just hypothetical." That ruling overturned a Virginia court that had ruled that laws against cross-burning muzzled free speech.

"A crime of intimidation loaded with a history of racial terror is not a proportional response to a gesture - admittedly tasteless - made daily on the highways at rush hour," the appellate judges wrote.

May told investigators that he suspected Sanders was responsible for thefts and gunshots in the neighborhood and had threatened his friend, Charles Danny Carpenter, the other man convicted in the cross-burning. Carpenter received no jail time because he cooperated with prosecutors.