Kentucky-based Ku Klux Klan group ordered to pay $2.5M in damages

By BRETT BARROUQUERE

November 14 2008

BRANDENBURG, Ky

A Kentucky-based Ku Klux Klan group was ordered on Friday to pay $2.5 million in damages in a judgment that civil rights attorneys hope will bankrupt the chapter.

The Southern Poverty Law Center sued the nation’s second-largest Klan outfit on behalf of a Latino teen severely beaten in 2006 by two Klan members. The Klansmen were convicted and served two years in prison.

A jury on Friday ordered Imperial Klans of America grand wizard Ron Edwards and two former lieutenants to pay 19-year-old Jordan Gruver $1.5 million for lost wages and medical expenses and Edwards to pay $1 million in punitive damages.

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“I’m overwhelmed. I’m victorious,” Gruver said. “And, I’m also sad. I’m sad because those guys are still going to be the same way that they were. That will never change.”

Morris Dees, the lead attorney for the center, said after the verdict he plans to seize Edwards’ property in Dawson Springs that serves as Klan headquarters along with any other assets that can be found. It wasn’t clear what the property is worth.

Earlier, in his closing statement, Dees told jurors that a substantial financial award would stop the Kentucky-based group in its tracks.

“It’s all about the money. It’s all about the money,” said Morris Dees. “If you stop the money, you’ll cut the organization off.”

The heavily tattooed Edwards plans to appeal the verdict. Despite the judgment, Edwards said the KKK will remain active.

“We’re not going away,” Edwards said.

Dees had argued during the civil trial that Edwards’ group incited violence against minorities with racist speeches and “hate metal,” leading to the attack on Gruver. Edwards, who represented himself during the trial, denied the charge and said his group’s not generally violent.

The case was similar to nearly a dozen others brought by the center against hate groups. A similar lawsuit bankrupted the white supremacist group Aryan Nations in Idaho in 1999.

The trial centered on a beating Gruver suffered at the hands of former Klan lieutenants Jarred Hensley and Andrew Watkins. Gruver suffered a broken jaw, bruised ribs and permanent nerve damage to his left arm.

The jury ordered Edwards to pay 20 percent of the compensatory damages, while splitting the remaining 80 percent evenly between Hensley and Watkins. The jury laid the $1 million in punitive damages solely on Edwards. Hensley, who had also represented himself, left the courthouse without commenting.

Watkins reached a confidential settlement with Gruver before the trial that will account for his share of Friday’s judgment.

Jurors deliberated for nearly six-and-a-half hours after a three-day trial at the Meade County Courthouse. As Meade Circuit Judge Bruce Butler read the verdicts, several skinheads in the courtroom shook their heads and looked down.

The judgment against Edwards and Hensley is active for 15 years, giving Gruver and the center time to pursue assets, Dees said.

“No matter what he gets, we’ll get a piece of it,” Dees said.

Gruver, who testified earlier Friday about having nightmares and the extent of his injuries, celebrated the verdict by hugging his mother, Cindy. He then joined his family and left the courthouse under heavy security into a cold rain.

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Klan Trial Goes To Jury

A little Ku Klux Klan History

Klan Trial Goes To Jury

By Stephanie Segretto

November 14 2008

BRANDENBURG, Ky.
The teenager attacked by members of the Ku Klux Klan testified in court Friday.

Jordan Gruver, 19, and the Southern Poverty Law Center are suing Ron Edwards, the leader of the Imperial Klans of America, and former member Jarred Hensley for an incident back in 2006 at the Meade County Fair.

Gruver testified that he suffered a broken jaw and permanent nerve damage to his left arm, and that he doesn’t leave his house and rarely sleeps more than two hours at a time or he has nightmares.

“They said, ‘Something, something, you little spic,’ and I tried to correct them. I am not a spic, I am a Native American,” Gruver said. “They kept on calling me spic, calling me border-hopper, you know, illegal immigrant… It came down to where Andrew Watkins was sitting there spitting at me and kicking dirt at me.”Gruver said he was surrounded and knew something bad was about to happen.He said a Klan member threw whiskey in his face, and that’s when he turned to walk away, but ran into another Klan member who he said hit him in the face, knocking him to the ground.”I went to cover up my face in the fetal position, like this,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many people was there. I can tell you that there was a lot of feet. All I could see was a bunch of feet. As they was kicking me, I prayed to myself. I said, ‘God, just please let me go. Please let me make it home.'”Edwards and Hensley are representing themselves. During closing arguments Friday, both said that what happened to Gruver has out of their control.”I cannot be responsible for what four people do on their own,” Edwards said. “That is basically violating my rights to belief. That’s what this is about. This isn’t about what I have done, even though the plaintiff’s counsel wants you to think that. I have not done anything. I have been legal in everything I have done.”The case is now in the jury’s hands.

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Jury deliberations begin in Klan beating trial

November 14 2008

By BRETT BARROUQUERE

BRANDENBURG, Ky.

A substantial financial award would stop a Kentucky-based Ku Klux Klan organization in its tracks, a civil rights attorney told a jury on Friday in a civil trial against the group and two white supremacists.

“It’s all about the money. It’s all about the money,” said Morris Dees, lead attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that tracks the Klan and other hate groups. “If you stop the money, you’ll cut the organization off.”

Dees and the center represent 19-year-old Jordan Gruver, an American citizen of Panamanian Indian descent, who sued the Imperial Klans of America, its Imperial Grand Wizard, Ron Edwards, and one of his former lieutenants, Jarred Hensley. A jury began to consider the case Friday after nearly three days of testimony. The lawsuit seeks more than $6 million.

Gruver testified on Friday that he suffered a broken jaw, bruised ribs and permanent nerve damage to his left arm after being beaten by four white supremacists at the Meade County Fair in July 2006. Two white supremacists who were initially part of the suit reached confidential settlements before trial.

Edwards and Hensley, both heavily tattooed with Confederate flags and Nazi and racist images, served as their own attorneys and declined to call any witnesses. In less than 10 minutes combined of closing arguments, the two men said they did not take part in beating Gruver.

Edwards asked the jury not to hold his beliefs against him.

“You may not agree with my beliefs, but that is your right,” Edwards said. “If these men had assaulted a white man, would this case be heard in this courtroom today?”

Hensley pleaded guilty in 2006 to attacking Gruver and served more than two years in prison. During closing arguments, Hensley told jurors he took the plea to avoid harsher charges and having a jury send him to prison because of his beliefs.

“Just because I wrote that I was guilty of it, doesn’t mean I did it,” Hensley said.

The three-day trial at the Meade County Courthouse focused on Gruver’s beating, the criminal history of members of the Klan and Edwards’ handling of his followers.

Throughout the trial, white supremacists wearing jackets covered in Nazi symbols watched inside the courtroom, while others lingered outside the courthouse amid the dozen sheriff’s deputies and state troopers providing security.

Gruver testified on Friday that he has nightmares about the attack and is afraid to leave the house. Gruver said he did not incite the attack and wanted nothing to do with Hensley and the other Klansmen at the fair.

“I knew you were not the nicest people in the world,” Gruver told Hensley during questioning.

“You put prejudice on my being a nice person because of my racial beliefs?” Hensley then asked.

“If you were the nicest people, you wouldn’t be calling me names,” Gruver said. “You’d be acting your age and not your shoe size.”

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I can only hope the jury does the right thing.

Putting White Supremacists out of business, is in everyones best interest.