Abstract

My first encounter with Virginia's cross-burning law was in a meeting of the Virginia ACLU Legal Panel. I sat in a group of about a dozen other volunteer lawyers listening as potential cases were presented to the panel for review. We were told the story of a Ku Klux Klan leader who had been arrested for burning a cross during a Ku Klux Klan rally conducted on a backwoods farm in southwestern Virginia, with the permission of a landowner. A copy of the Virginia cross-burning statute was distributed for us to read:

It shall be unlawful for any person or persons, with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons, to burn, or cause to be burned, a cross on the property of another, a highway or other public place. Any person who shall violate any provision of this section shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony.

Any such burning of a cross shall be prima facie evidence of an intent to intimidate a person or group of persons. 

I spoke up, urging the Virginia ACLU to take the case. Another member of the panel, a charismatic and highly successful criminal defense lawyer in Richmond named David Baugh, who happened to be African American, went me one further. He volunteered to defend the Klansman. David had just made a powerful argument for suing police departments that engaged in racial profiling at traffic stops, in a campaign against a crime that he described as "driving while Black." Now he was willing to defend a KuKluxer. We joked with David about his altruism. Why did he think a Ku Klux Klan leader would ever let an African American lawyer represent him? "We probably need to let him know up front that his ACLU lawyer is Black," another panel member suggested. "Not fair to sandbag the guy." We agreed that if he refused to be represented by a black lawyer, we would tell him we were unable to represent him. ...

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2004

ISBN

9786613023834

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