HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) — Two white men have been sentenced to 8 1/2 and 11 1/2 years in prison for burning a cross in the yard of a white woman whose black friends visited her at home.
Michael Allen White, 21, and Benjamin Michael Sloan, 20, pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy and intimidation. They were sentenced Thursday.
A co-defendant, Lee Wayne Bray, 20, was sentenced last month to six years in prison. He said the cross-burning was a drunken prank.
Authorities said the men burned the cross at the home of Rhonda Kay Lyle last summer and smashed windows and a glass door with a shovel. Lyle and her two children moved out the next day.