National Roundup

Florida
Mistrial for man charged with threatening U.S. Rep.’s children
MIAMI (AP) — Jurors have failed to reach a verdict for a Florida man charged with threatening to kill the children of U.S. Rep. Brian Mast.

Treasure Coast Newspapers reports that a federal judge in Miami declared a mistrial Thursday for 68-year-old Laurence Key. The Stuart man had been charged with communicating a threat to kidnap or injure a person.

Authorities say Key was arrested in June 2018 after an intern said he called the Florida congressman’s office in Washington and threatened to kidnap and kill Mast’s three young children because he was upset about President Donald Trump’s immigration policies separating immigrant children from their parents.

Authorities say Key had contacted Mast’s office 478 times before.

It wasn’t clear if the U.S. Attorney’s Office would seek a new trial for Key.

Virginia
Judge: Black activist can’t represent neo-Nazi group
A black activist who says he took control over one of the nation’s largest neo-Nazi groups was barred Thursday from participating on the group’s behalf in a federal lawsuit over the violence that erupted at a white nationalist rally in Virginia.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Joel Hoppe ruled that James Hart Stern cannot represent the National Socialist Movement because he is not an attorney and didn’t comply with the court’s order to hire one. Instead, the magistrate is allowing a lawyer based in Burke, Virginia, to represent the neo-Nazi group and its longtime leader, Jeff Schoep.

Schoep has claimed Stern essentially tricked him into transferring leadership. Stern said he wanted to use his position as the group’s president and director to undermine its defense against the lawsuit filed over bloodshed at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“My goal is to shut it down,” he said Thursday.

Stern had asked the federal court in Virginia to issue a judgment against the NSM before the case is tried. Now he says he is pursuing other ways to put the Detroit-based group out of business. Stern sued Schoep and three other group leaders last month in Riverside, Calif., court records show.

Stern filed the suit himself, without an attorney. It seeks hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and asks the court to bar Schoep and others from interfering with Stern’s efforts to maintain NSM websites.

Neither Schoep nor his attorney, W. Edward ReBrook IV, immediately responded to phone calls seeking comment.

In a March 18 email to the magistrate judge, ReBrook said Stern is not, “in my legal opinion and in operational fact,” in any way affiliated with the National Socialist Movement.

“He is not a named defendant, is not the president of NSM, has never been a member of NSM, and does not speak for NSM,” ReBrook wrote, adding that his client plans to file counterclaims against Stern.

Michigan corporate records show Stern replaced Jeff Schoep as the group’s leader in January. However, corporate records that Schoep signed in March name a different president.

In a phone interview last month, Schoep said he already was preparing to step down as the group’s leader when Stern persuaded him to hand over its reins in an effort to reduce the party’s legal liability.

“He has that piece of paper, but he is absolutely not recognized as the leader of the National Socialist Movement,” Schoep said of Stern.

NSM members used to attend rallies and protests in full Nazi uniforms, including at a march in Toledo, Ohio, that sparked a riot in 2005. More recently, Schoep tried to rebrand the group and appeal to a new generation of racists and anti-Semites by getting rid of such overt displays of Nazi symbols.

Stern served a prison sentence for mail fraud at the same facility as onetime Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen, who was convicted in the “Mississippi Burning” killings of three civil rights workers. Killen died in January 2018.

In 2012, Stern claimed Killen signed over to him power of attorney and ownership of 40 acres of land while they were serving prison terms together. A lawyer for Killen asked a judge to throw out the land transfer and certify that Killen and his family owned the property.


Mississippi
Humanist group objects to ‘In God We Trust’ license plate
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A national group that includes atheists and agnostics is objecting to Mississippi’s new standard license plate design that has the phrase “In God We Trust.”

The American Humanist Association sent a letter Thursday to the state’s revenue commissioner and attorney general. It demands that Mississippi either set a new standard license plate design without a religious phrase or allow people to get another license plate design without paying an extra fee.

The association says it could sue Mississippi if the change is not made.

“Mississippi’s law violates the First Amendment rights of atheists in accordance with firmly settled Supreme Court precedent,” American Humanist Association attorney Monica Miller said in a news release. “The Supreme Court has made clear that the state cannot force motorists to display an ideological message they deem unacceptable on their license plates.”

Revenue Commissioner Herb Frierson said he’s asking lawyers to review the letter. Frierson said the design was chosen by a commission that included representatives from the governor’s office, the state Department of Revenue, the attorney general’s office and the treasurer’s office.

The new standard license plate has been sold since January. The center shows the state seal, which includes “In God We Trust.”

Mississippi offers several specialty license plate designs for $30 extra per year.

The American Humanist Association’s letter to Mississippi officials cites a 1977 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a dispute over the phrase “Live Free or Die” on New Hampshire’s standard license plate. People who were Jehovah’s Witnesses sued the state, saying the phrase was “repugnant to their moral, religious and political beliefs.”

The Supreme Court ruled that a state cannot force a person, as part of daily life, to display a phrase that violates their beliefs. Justices said the First Amendment protects “both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all.”