A white-supremacist prison plot hits the streets-with an unusual 'Aryan' at the helm
By Bob Moser
On a midwinter day in 2001, Leo Felton joined the flow of sad-eyed tourists winding through the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. As they squinted at images and listened to stories from the Nazi death camps, Felton's fellow visitors must have noticed him. Especially in such a setting, it would have been hard to miss an NBA-sized young man with wide shoulders, a piercing stare and the words "skin" and "head" tattooed on either side of his skull.
As they walked away, shaking their heads over the toll taken by human hatred, Felton's fellow tourists could not have imagined the very different kind of cogitation in which he was lost: Wonder what it would take to blow this sucker up?
After 11years of hard time, Felton had been released just days before, in late January, from Northern State Prison in New Jersey. The prison stint had transformed him from a drug-addled, wildly unstable teenager to a committed racist with laser-like determination — a virtual poster boy for the extensive prison-recruitment efforts of white-supremacist hate groups.
And now, with the help of a small, underground gang organized behind bars at Northern State, he was preparing to embark on a series of crimes designed to unleash RAHOWA, or "racial holy war," on minorities and Jews.
Shattering the Holocaust Museum would be just one step. Felton and his gang, called Aryan Unit One, also talked about bombing Boston's New England Holocaust Memorial and Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, named for the late regional head of the Anti-Defamation League.
And Aryan Unit One wasn't just going to be an anti-Semitic demolition crew; possible assassination targets included the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Dreamworks film executives like Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, and Southern Poverty Law Center co-founder Morris Dees.
"[T]he primary goal right now," Felton wrote a co-conspirator in his high-blown style, "is to foment revolution and inaugurate a natural order on the continent." This "natural order" would be the same as Hitler's. And, as Felton wrote in another letter, "The means by which we will attain this is quite simply war."
But there was something Felton's co-conspirators didn't know — something that visitors to the Holocaust Museum on that winter day in probably wouldn't have guessed, either. That oversized Skinhead, casing the memorial in the name of Aryan supremacy, was not himself an Aryan.
In just a couple of months, after his cruel ambitions were thwarted by a lucky arrest, it would be right there on his Boston Police Department booking sheet: Name: Leo Felton. Age: 30. Race: Black.
An Aryan Grows in Maryland
Aryan Unit One was hardly the first white-supremacist plot to hatch behind prison walls. It surely won't be the last. But it may well have been the only such effort to be spearheaded by a person of color.
The twisted tale of Aryan Unit One's commander-in-chief began in 1970, when Felton was born to a pair of civil-rights activists. His father, Calvin Felton, was a light-skinned black architect. His mother, Corinne Vincelette, was a white ex-nun with a Jewish grandparent.
Though his parents split when he was 2, Felton regularly visited his father and played hoops with his five half-brothers, all of whom identify as black. Vincelette raised him with a lesbian partner on a shady cul-de-sac in suburban Gaithersburg, Md., while she worked on prison reform for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C.
In this middle-class household steeped in tolerance, Felton grew into a gangly young man whose good looks reminded his mother of civil-rights leader Julian Bond. Tests showed that he had an approaching genius level, along with a prodigious vocabulary and a talent for drawing. But the tests showed something else, too: Felton was profoundly disturbed.
It was hardly a surprising diagnosis for a kid who, according to neighbors and school records, lobbed Molotov cocktails at neighbors' garages, tried to cut the electrical wires of a house across the street, attempted to stab a classmate in the eye, and got himself booted out of nearly every school he attended.
Felton was institutionalized for the first time at age 12, after chasing a neighborhood boy down the street with a knife. He spent his teenage years shuttling from psychiatric hospitals to schools and back.
After dropping out of the Mark Twain School for the emotionally disturbed at 17, Felton took to hanging out with local Skinheads. He shot smack, went to hardcore concerts and built a criminal record marked by impulsiveness. He stole bikes, cars, and even a piggy bank from the home of a fellow Skinhead's parents. At least once, he tried to kill himself.
After skipping out on a suspended sentence, Felton lit out on a cross-country spree, using different false names (including John Hinckley's) whenever he was nabbed for petty thefts. The spree came to a halt back east in 1990, when Felton got into an altercation with an officer who asked him to stop shouting obscenities.
When he was fingerprinted, police discovered that he had built up a pile of arrest warrants, including one for the savage beating of a Cuban-American taxi driver named Edward Torres. In what he described as a road-rage incident, Felton had taken a tire iron to Torres' head and left him for dead along a busy highway between New Jersey and New York City.
That incident bore the hallmarks of a racial attack. But, like everything else with Felton, the truth is more complicated. Felton was driving home from a concert that night with a black friend, Kenneth Gayle, who was then a senior at Rutgers University. Gayle backed up Felton's road-rage story, insisting that his friend "was not a racist."
Felton's parents, siblings and childhood friends agreed: Leo Felton was fiercely angry, but his animosity was not focused on minorities.
Whatever his views on race may have been at age 19, however, they hardened behind bars. And however violently confused Felton had been, he would emerge at age 30 — like so many before him — with a clear and savage purpose.
The Training Facility
Two weeks after he walked out of Northern State, Felton got a letter from prison-mate Wesley Dellinger. Known to his cohorts as "Wolf," Dellinger headed the prison's brutal white-power gang, the East Coast Aryan Brotherhood.
"Prison can be used as a training facility," Wolf wrote, "and should be."
He was not talking about rehabilitation programs; he was talking about indoctrinating racists who would, once on the outside, put their ideology into action. As Wolf knew, Felton was living proof of how efficacious such training can be.
For the first several years of his sentence, Felton's mind wandered much the way it had in his teenage years. He began to read racist tracts, getting into trouble several times for possessing neo-Nazi materials from the Aryan Nations, a hate group based in Idaho. In 1993, he celebrated a prison wedding with Lisa Meetre, a nurse and former Skinhead who knew him in Maryland and corresponded with him after his convictions.
Two years later, he converted to Greek Orthodoxy, keeping Lent by praying and eating peanut-butter sandwiches instead of ordinary prison fare. He even began training for the priesthood.
But Felton's devotion to Jesus proved fleeting. By the time he was transferred to maximum security at Northern State in 1999, he had a serious reputation as a hard-core racist. Prison officials knew he had become a leading apostle of the White Order of Thule, a small "elite" group of racist pagans that Felton once described as a "graduate-level school of Aryan" ideology.
They knew he was part of the East Coast Aryan Brotherhood. They knew he had stabbed a black inmate when he tried to reach over Felton for a slice of cake in the cafeteria. They also knew that Felton had the kind of charisma that could win converts to his cause.
Still, they gave him an ideal cellmate: Michael Reid, another member of the Aryan Brotherhood. Felton soon hooked up with Wolf, who was the Brotherhood's "shot-caller" at Northern State, allegedly deciding which minority prisoners the brothers should try to kill.
Felton introduced Wolf to the intellectual bent of the White Order, which requires its members to learn Norse mythology and study highfalutin works by the likes of Jung and Nietzche. In return, Wolf helped Felton find a focus for the hatred that had always seethed inside him.
Communicating through prison "runners" and letters sent through friends on the outside, they cooked up what Wolf called "a revolutionary battle plan."
'The Spirit of Bob'
The plot was modeled on the Order, also known as the Silent Brotherhood or Bruders Schweigen. A gang of some two dozen white-supremacist outlaws, the Order robbed armored cars to the tune of $4 million, counterfeited money on Aryan Nations presses, and murdered Jewish radio host Alan Berg in Denver in 1984.
The guru of the Order, Bob Mathews, became a martyr to the movement when he died during a fiery shootout with the FBI that same year.
According to Thomas "Hammer" Struss, a New Jersey native lured by Wolf into the Aryan Brotherhood, the new effort would be "following in the path of the original Order, but learning from their mistakes and taking it to a whole new level."
As they left prison, Aryan brothers would organize a series of small, discrete, "well-placed cells," operating underground with false identities. Aryan Unit One would lead the way, with Felton taking Bob Matthews' role as the heart and brains of the assassination-and-demolition crew.
"Hail to you, Hail to Odin, the Spirit of Bob lives on," Wolf enthused in a letter to Felton.
Felton's comics told stories of violent Aryan heroes — but he couldn't make his life mimic his art.
Felton, who often invoked Matthews in the racist comic books he drew, was convinced that ex-convicts would make the best racist revolutionaries. Late in 2000, as his release date approached, Felton wrote to a co-conspirator: "There are many behind these walls that carry within them an intensity, a barbarity" that is "woefully lacking" among whites on the outside.
The co-conspirator he was writing on this occasion had never been locked up. Erica Chase, a 20-year-old who resembled a sorority member more than an Aryan warrior, was almost as unlikely a member of Aryan Unit One as Felton himself.
Described by her best friend's father as "a bubbly young lady," Chase grew up on toney Cape Cod, but fell in with racist Skinheads during her teenage years. After drifting from place to place, job to job, Chase had landed in Michigan City, Ind., where she worked at a used car lot, partied with the vicious Outlaw Hammerskins gang, and dreamed of finding a partner in her own violent ambitions.
In 2000, she started sending letters to Felton as part of a prison outreach effort by the World Church of the Creator, an anti-Semitic hate group based in Illinois.
In court, two of Chase's friends would testify that she had long talked about doing more than tattooing "WHITE POWER" on her toes. During a stint in Philadelphia, she told Skinhead pal James Nienczura that she wanted to blow up the local African American Museum, but "there was no one to do it with her." Sometimes, when the subject of "muds" or "niggers" came up, Nienczura testified that "she'd talk about shooting them."
If Chase was looking for a partner in hate crime, she found the ideal pen pal in Felton, who bragged in one letter about women being attracted to his "criminal mystique." As their correspondence flourished, Chase began to mail Felton the racist materials he requested.
"Executed like a true subversive," Felton wrote back approvingly after one such mailing. Whether she knew it or not, Chase was proving her mettle as a future member of Aryan Unit One.
During his last year at Northern State, Felton plotted with Wolf, pursued his long-distance romance with Chase, and stopped responding to letters from the black side of his family. He couldn't wait to lead the Aryans into battle.
In a letter to Chase dated "Yule 26th" 2000, Felton looked forward his impending release. "If I don't hear back from you before Jan. 28th," he wrote, "I might be on the street! Scary thought (for the untermenschen, not me)."
Itching for RAHOWA
Setting Leo Felton free was a little like releasing a chemical of dangerous but unknown properties into the air. In the words of U.S. Attorney Ted Merritt, he "wasted little time showing how serious he was" about inciting chaos.
Felton moved into the tidy Ipswich, Mass., home of his wife, Lisa, who had faithfully waited almost 10 years for him to join her. He immediately set to work on Aryan Unit One. He cased bombing targets. He ordered books and consulted Web sites that contained recipes for homemade explosives and explained how to go underground with a false identity.
An obsessive list-maker, he jotted down — and began to buy — the materials he would need to mimic the bomb Timothy McVeigh used to kill 168 people in Oklahoma City. At the bottom of some of his lists was an abbreviation that became a mantra: "OKC."
Calls flew back and forth between Felton and Chase — more than 200 in all, between February and April.
While Felton made plans to get an apartment in Boston for Aryan Unit One headquarters, Chase began helping him "clean" the counterfeit money he'd started printing off his wife's computer as a source of income for the cell. Felton sent Express Mail packages of faux currency to Chase, who would take the bills to stores, buy small items and receive real ("clean") money in return.
Felton's prison comrades egged him on. "In Odin's name, may you guide us to victory," wrote Wolf.
Michael Reid, after hearing of Felton's plans for the Boston Holocaust Memorial, seconded Wolf's emotion but injected a note of caution: "I'm very excited about this news," Reid wrote. "I know I don't need to say it, but heed it anyway: Many dry runs."
But the "brains" of Aryan Unit One was too impatient for dry runs, as the brawn — Thomas "Hammer" Struss — soon found out.
Shortly after Felton's Aryan brother got out of prison in mid-February, he called Felton, as Wolf had instructed him to do. Struss had never met Felton — they were housed on different yards at Northern State — so he saw this as a "getting-to-know-you" sort of call. But, as he later testified, it "pretty much escalated into telling me that I needed to get up there" to Ipswich.
"That's it," Felton said. "We need to start this off."
The Revolution Goes Awry
Struss was no pushover. He had entered prison as a teenager with no white supremacist leanings, but came out six years later as a compact-but-menacing Skinhead with "88" (racist code for "Heil Hitler") tattooed on his neck.
His nickname referred to the hammer of Thor, the Norse gods' mightiest weapon. But Hammer was, above all, a loyal soldier in the cause. He followed Felton's orders and caught a bus to Ipswich.
In a matter of hours, Felton was talking him into a bank robbery. "It'd be good to bind our blood as a loyalty test," Struss remembered him saying. Hammer was nonplussed. "We'd just met each other six hours ago and we were planning a job."
The next morning, Struss found himself in downtown Boston, waiting anxiously on the sidewalk while Felton cased a series of banks. "Then he came out and said, 'This is the one.'"
The one was a tiny branch of Citizens Bank, conspicuous on a bustling corner of the Boylston Street shopping district. Felton and Struss hastily cooked up a plan: After Struss held up the bank, he would flee on foot and meet Felton at a nearby Dumpster where Struss could shed the clothes that would be caught on the bank's surveillance cameras.
From there, they'd catch a cab. But wait: What about a hold-up note? Felton ducked into a nearby and purchased "a box of pens, a little notepad, and a yellow bubble-wrap envelope."
After some debate, the conspirators settled on the wording of a note: "No alarm. I've got a gun. Large bills."
As Felton skulked out of sight across Boylston Street, Struss went into the Citizens Bank and slid the note to a teller.
"She hit the alarm," he later testified, provoking laughter in the courtroom. "Then she started getting money out. I told her, 'Since you hit the alarm, can you hurry up?'"
The comedy of errors continued as Struss dashed out of the bank with the envelope, chewing up the note as he ran to the rendezvous point. The getaway plan, such as it was, fell apart when he and Felton met back up.
"We zigzagged down some side streets looking for a cab," Struss testified, but none would stop. After what seemed like hours, Felton successfully hailed a taxi and ordered the driver to speed toward Ipswich. They stopped at a pizza place to count their haul, which came to $1,128. And then they argued some more.
"I expressed to him that I wanted to get back to Jersey," Struss recalled, "to make sure there was nothing on us" before they attempted another hit.
Felton had no use for Struss' prudence. But finally he relented, sending his new blood brother away with the bulk of their haul, about $700. Struss was in too great a hurry to catch a bus, and by the time he got back to Jersey, his pockets were empty. The cab rides had cost him his whole share of the loot. The revolution was off to a sputtering start.
Bonnie and Clyde
If Hammer was having second thoughts about the man he called "Sir Leo," Erica Chase was not. In February, she had gotten her first glimpse of Felton when he sent her a photo taken by his wife. Naked from the waist up, with three black X's tattooed across his chest, Felton is shown wearing an old-fashioned outlaw's bandana and aiming a gun at the camera.
"Hey there dollbaby," Felton wrote in an accompanying note. "Don't run away — just do as I say and I promise I won't hurt you. 88, Leo."
By early April, Felton had found an apartment he and Chase could share in Boston, and she had convinced a friend to drive her east from Indiana. Along the way, she told James Nienczura about her grand plans with Felton.
"They were going to burn off their fingerprints with hot oil," Nienczura later testified, "and assume the identities of missing children."
With the new IDs, Chase told him, they planned to "go around and be terrorists." She didn't want to be any more specific than that. "You'll read about it in the newspapers," she assured Nienczura.
The morning of April 10, Felton and Chase moved into a red brick walk-up on Salem Street, just blocks away from the historic Old North Church. In this gentrified neighborhood, where waterfront condos go for upwards of million, the aspiring Bonnie and Clyde of Aryan supremacy festooned their walls with Nazi flags and posters of Hitler and got busy.
While Felton took apart a coffee pot, following instructions for wiring a fertilizer bomb, Chase fanned out around Boston and the North Shore, cleaning counterfeit twenties and fifties in fast-food outlets and office-supply stores. Investigators later found $480 worth of their faux currency in little Danvers, Mass. — all of it passed in just eight days.
Felton continued to demand that Struss return to Boston, even though Hammer had been arrested in New Jersey in the cell's second attempt at swiping a bigger bundle of cash. Struss and a fourth member of Aryan Unit One, recently paroled Chris DeMunguia (a.k.a. "Conan"), had planned an armored-car heist. Struss stole a getaway car from a K-Mart parking lot, then sped off to meet Conan.
But, his sense of direction shaky after six years in prison, he took a wrong turn and veered straight into a police roadblock. After Struss's father ponied up his sizable bail, Struss got a phone call from Felton, who was hardly in a sympathetic mood.
"You should be with me," he bellowed, "or I should be mourning you, because you should've had a shootout."
Felton's plans to take the cell underground were proceeding apace. From a Web site devoted to missing children, he had chosen to take on the identity of Walter Thomas Ackerson, a blond-haired, blue-eyed 17-year-old who disappeared in Oregon in 1990. On April 18, Felton went to the Lahey Center for Cosmetic & Laser Surgery in Lexington, Mass., where he began the -process of burning off his unmissable "skin head" tattoo.
The next afternoon, his head swathed in a white bandage, Felton waited outside a Dunkin Donuts in a blue-collar Boston neighborhood while Chase went inside to buy an iced coffee and clean another twenty. But this time, the cashier wasn't biting.
"This is fake," she told Chase, perking up the ears of the man behind her in line — a squat, blond, off-duty cop named Chris Connolly.
When Connolly followed Chase into the parking lot and began questioning the couple, they took off running, scaling a rusty fence behind the doughnut shop and fleeing down train tracks. It took Connolly a couple of minutes to catch up. When he did, Felton knew he had only one chance left to go out in a Bob Matthews-style blaze of glory.
"Go ahead," he said, "shoot me."
Connolly declined the offer.
Felton and Chase had been caught on the anniversary of OKC. Investigators later found a calendar in the Salem Street apartment with the next day circled: April 20, Hitler's birthday.
However Aryan Unit One had planned to commemorate these occasions, the plans were now off. But in one respect, at least, Felton had managed to follow in the footsteps of the bomber.
"It's just like Timothy McVeigh," Boston police officer Robert Anthony, who helped book the couple, told the Boston Herald newspaper. "He was caught by a cop at a traffic stop."
This time, though, nobody had to die first.
Race Trader
For Leo Felton, the worst was yet to come.
It wouldn't be when he had to holler "88" from his holding cell to get Chase, who was being questioned down the hall, to clam up. It wouldn't be when he stood trial in federal court this summer, his defense in the hands of a Jewish attorney, watching Thomas Struss and a parade of Chase's friends testify against the couple. It wouldn't be when the all-white jury convicted him of multiple charges of counterfeiting, bank-robbery and conspiracy.
No, the nadir would come two months after Aryan Unit One crashed and burned. On June 21, the Boston Herald revealed Felton's racial background to a reading audience that had already become riveted by the strange tale of the "hub bomb plot."
Two days later, Felton broke apart a disposable prison-issue razor and tried to kill himself by slashing a jugular vein in his throat. Although he couldn't finish the job, others would certainly try: Once the newspaper reports made their way to prison, officials say Felton was immediately "put on knockoff" by his former racist pals.
A few days later, recovering from the suicide attempt, Felton penned a long letter in small, neat script to the Herald writer who had made his biracial roots public.
"By a disastrous and completely unforeseeable turn of events," he lamented, "I have been splashed all over newspapers and televisions in a major city, with my biology and my politics (or the government's contorted version thereof) at the forefront of the whole thing. I have been publicly vilified and had my one 'skeleton,' namely my racial origin, put on display in the worst imaginable way, alienating me from the only community I've known since I was and undermining the few meaningful relationships I had with other people. This latter element [the 'skeleton'] is in fact the reason I opened my jugular veins last Saturday night."
Expressing the hope that his letter would be published "in its entirety without changes or redactions" — it was not — Felton went on to preach against the "evil" of his parents' miscegenation.
"I am what I am," he concluded. "Contaminated, falsely condemned, and alienated from my comrades. But a lover of Nature nonetheless, and a lover of the West, and ever an unrepentant enemy of the multicultural myth."
The letter was signed, "damned and defiant, Leo Vincelette Felton."
Defiant or not, it's a safe bet Felton isn't about to be admitted to the pantheon of white supremacist heroes, where his hero Bob Mathews is immortalized. He has become a different kind of symbol.
For as bumbling a revolutionary strike force as it turned out to be, Aryan Unit One typifies the racist violence that breeds in American prisons and — more and more often — emerges to threaten the rest of the society.
Well, there goes that theory that miixed people can't be racist.
Seriously, I was amazed that such a guy with that history could go down that road. But anything is possible. Give an unstable person who feels isolated from society an outlet and the things he'll do can be endless.
Well, there goes that theory that miixed people can't be racist.
Seriously, I was amazed that such a guy with that history could go down that road. But anything is possible. Give an unstable person who feels isolated from society an outlet and the things he'll do can be endless.
And his poor parents...
Who said mixed-race people can't be racist? Jeez, there are a whole heck of lot them. Mixed-race people are human beings with all of the human frailties.
Claro. I meant it more sarcastically. Like the people who say "I can't be racist, I'm mixed." Sure you can, being mixed doesn't exclude you from the possibility...as this article displays.
This is an incredibly sad story. Was Felton sentenced to life in prison? I know that he arrest and the outting of his African ancestry happened a few years ago. Is there any new information on him?
I vaguely remember hearing that Charles Bryd tried to contact him. I don't know any more details about this. Am I correct Charles?
Leo Vincelette Felton (b. 1970, Silver Spring, Maryland) is a white supremacist who was convicted of bank robbery and plotting to blow up Jewish and black landmarks around Boston.
Leo's father, Calvin Felton (b. 1930), is of mixed race and considers himself black, while his mother, Corinne Vincelette (b. 1931), is a former nun of Jewish descent who became involved in the black equality movement. His parents divorced when he was two and his mother announced herself as a lesbian and started a new life with a Jewish woman. He was institutionalized at age 9 by his mother (both he and his father agree that this was unnecessary) and thereafter he committed a series of petty thefts which he has attributed to a combination of institutionalization and "aggressive black DNA".
Incarceration gave Felton an opportunity to observe how different races reacted when integration was enforced and societal stigmas over racism were not in action to civilise conduct. He claims that the whites in prison were under a continual state of siege by the other races, and that he was welcomed by whites, while blacks tried to rape him (his prison sentence was extended for attacking two blacks who made sexual advances).
In prison he became an organizer for white supremacist day groups, organizing book reviews and exercise whilst obscuring his ancestry. He was imprisoned between 1990 and 2001 for the attempted murder of a cab driver during a road rage incident. Out of prison and married, Felton began an affair with Erica Chase, a 21 year old alleged white supremacist. Felton robbed a bank with a friend from prison and forged money in order to buy materials to create a fertiliser bomb. It is unclear what the target was to be, but it is believed to have been a Holocaust museum in New England or the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, the latter named for an Anti-Defamation League (ADL) regional director. He also desired to assassinate high profile blacks and Jews such as Jesse Jackson and Steven Spielberg, as well as drawing cartoons of himself bombing the offices of the ADL. As is the case with many other white supremacists who become criminals, his motivations were to ignite a race war. An attendant at a doughnut shop spotted a counterfeit $20 Chase tried to pass him. He alerted an off-duty Boston police officer, who then arrested Chase and Felton. Felton was sentenced to 21 years in 2002 for bank robbery, conspiracy to commit bank robbery and other crimes
After learning of his ancestry, many of Felton's comrades agreed to testify against him. He states that he no longer believes wholeheartedly in the cause that once became his reason for life, but he has not renounced or distanced himself from his former views. Reactions to the story of Leo Felton have been mixed, with strong support from many black commentators who claim that in a race-blind society all should be able to claim whatever racial ancestry one likes. He has faced disbelief or intrigue from many whites and constant mockery from both racist and antiracist groups. After separation from his former comrades, Felton wrote a letter in which he criticized his parents and said he is "ever an unrepentant enemy of the multicultural myth."
Quote:
The black father of Leo Felton, the suspected terrorist who is accused of plotting to blow up a Jewish or African-American landmark in Boston, said yesterday that he had heard no news of his son since March of last year, and expressed disbelief over allegations that his son had turned into a white supremacist.
''He knows exactly who he is,'' Calvin Felton said. ''He's half and half, and whatever he wants to call himself, he's black as far as I'm concerned and he's never said anything differently.''
Calvin Felton, who is divorced from Felton's mother, said his son played equally with black children and white when growing up in Maryland, and wrote frequently to his black relatives during his 11 years in prison. ''He was a total liberal,'' Calvin Felton, 71, told the Globe last night in a telephone interview from his home in Canada, where he is a retired architect. ''He's not a racist, that's for sure. That part I am 100 percent sure about.''
The comments only add to the air of mystery surrounding Leo Felton, whose mother is white and whose father is biracial but considers himself black. Leo Felton stands accused of stockpiling the same kind of chemicals that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh used and planning to ignite a ''racial war'' in Boston by blowing up a monument.
His indictment in federal court charges that Felton ''was a member of a self-described Aryan order known as the White Order of Thule and advocated violent action as a way of advancing a white power agenda to rid the United States of a multiracial society and its perceived Jewish influence.'' But Felton's father, who says he saw his son every weekend during his childhood and heard from him often during Felton's years in prison, said his son never had problems with his identity and had grown up in an extraordinarily open-minded household.
Felton's mother, Corinne Vincelette, a former Episcopal nun who threw herself into the civil rights movement in the 1960s, met Calvin Felton at a party and the two married a few years later. Even after they divorced before Leo Felton was 2, Calvin Felton was a regular presence in his son's life, he said. But Leo Felton spent too many years in ''confining institutions'' during his childhood, Calvin Felton said, referring to a series of places for troubled children that Felton's mother enrolled him in.
''She had him incarcerated at age 9,'' Calvin Felton said. ''He learned about drugs in the institution.'' Felton dropped out of school at age 17, according to Montgomery County, Md., records, and by the time he was 19 he had been arrested several times for alleged theft - once stealing a bag of groceries from a woman's truck - and for allegedly possessing syringes.
Felton started hanging out with skinheads around that time, but did not have racist tendencies, his father said. ''That was some fad or group that he was associated with,'' his father said. Despite the fact that Leo had a Nazi tattoo, ''he didn't know the real meaning of what he was getting involved in. He took it as something that a group a teenagers would be fooling around with.''
Felton's father shed a different light on his son's past scrapes with the law: His arrest in 1989 for beating up a New York taxi driver from Cuba was more like a road-rage incident, his father said. Court records show another black man was in the car at the time. And when Leo Felton slashed two inmates during his time in prison - an attack that lengthened his sentence - it was because he was defending himself from their sexual advances, Calvin Felton said. ''They wanted to have him bend their way, sexually, and he defended himself,'' Calvin Felton said.
Leo Felton was released from prison in January, and went to live in Ipswich with his wife, Lisa, a nurse who married him in prison. But he was arrested April 19 for allegedly trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill at an East Boston Dunkin' Donuts. A police search of an apartment he shared with Erica Chase, a 21-year-old alleged white supremacist, turned up evidence of a plot to bomb a monument, possibly the New England Holocaust Memorial, authorities have said. But Calvin Felton said he had no idea that his son had ever been released from prison.
''The last time I talked to him, he talked about getting involved with computers and making a life for himself when he came out,'' Calvin Felton said. ''He was in good spirits and I was impressed that everything was going to go well.''
Calvin Felton said Leo was the youngest of his six sons, and the only one who had ever been in trouble with the law. He wrote to his son frequently and spoke to him about every month, he said, but around March of last year, the letters started coming back unopened. ''The last letter I sent to him was sent back,'' he said. ''I had no idea why.''
Quote:
221 F. Supp. 2d 209, *; 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17220, **
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, v. ERICA CHASE, and LEO V. FELTON, Defendants.
Criminal No. 01-10198-NG
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
221 F. Supp. 2d 209; 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17220
September 13, 2002, Decided
SUBSEQUENT HISTORY: Motion granted by, in part, Motion denied by, in part United States v. Felton, 239 F. Supp. 2d 122, 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45 (D. Mass., 2003)
Vacated by, Remanded by United States v. Felton, 2005 U.S. App. LEXIS 15607 (1st Cir. Mass., July 29, 2005)
DISPOSITION: [**1] Court's prior order denying defendant Chase's motion for judgment of acquittal on Count Three vacated. After reconsideration, defendant Chase's motion for judgment of acquittal on Count Three granted. Defendant Felton's renewed motion for acquittal granted in part and denied in part.
CASE SUMMARY
PROCEDURAL POSTURE: Count three of an indictment charged defendants (a male and a female) with violating 18 U.S.C.S. § 924(c) by possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, to wit, conspiracy to make and possess a destructive device. They were both found guilty of this offense, and they filed motions for judgment of acquittal as to count three. The male defendant filed a similar motion as to count 11 (conspiracy to commit bank robbery).
OVERVIEW: Evidence showed that the female defendant purchased the gun as part of her "plan" with the male defendant, which included manufacturing bombs and counterfeiting. The gun was found in defendants' residence, in the same room as explosive materials and counterfeit currency. Neither defendant was carrying the firearm at the time of his or her arrest. The court held that under § 924(c), the prosecution had to prove some "specific nexus" between the firearm and the predicate offense, but it failed to do so. Cases construing 18 U.S.C.S. § 924(c), in all of which drug trafficking had been the predicate offense, were not germane to the instant case. In such cases guns arguably were possessed to protect the trafficker from being robbed or cheated by buyers, so mere proximity of drugs to a gun could be sufficient proof of guilt. Here, the gun played no role in the conspiracy to manufacture a bomb. That defendants might have had some use for the gun in the furtherance of the conspiracy was mere speculation. As to count 11, the court rejected the male defendant's argument that testimony of his co-conspirator had to be corroborated; moreover, it found that there had been corroboration.
OUTCOME: Defendants' motions for a judgment of acquittal as to count three was granted. The male defendant's motion for a judgment of acquittal on count 11 was denied.
Criminal Law & Procedure > Trials > Motions for Acquittal Retrieve All Headnotes and Additional Cases on this Topic
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HN1Go to this Headnote in the case. The standard on a motion for acquittal is a strict one: if the evidence presented, taken in the light most flattering to the prosecution, together with all reasonable inferences favorable to it, permits a rational jury to find each essential element of the crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt, then the evidence is legally sufficient. More Like This Headnote
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HN2Go to this Headnote in the case. Although a defendant's statement is admissible against defendant as a party admission under Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(2)(a), it may be used against a co-conspirator defendant only if it is found to be a co-conspirator statement under Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(2)(E)). More Like This Headnote
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HN3Go to this Headnote in the case. See 18 U.S.C.S. § 924(c)(1)(A).
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HN4Go to this Headnote in the case. In effect, 18 U.S.C.S. § 924(c) has two parts: The prosecution must show beyond a reasonable doubt (1) a nexus between the weapon and the defendant as established by the defendant's actual or constructive possession of the weapon, and (2) some "specific nexus" between the firearm and the predicate offense. Where the defendant brandishes or actively carries the weapon, there is little problem with either prong -- he plainly has dominion over the weapon and is using it in the crime. More Like This Headnote
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HN5Go to this Headnote in the case. In a prosecution under 18 U.S.C.S. § 924(c) for possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, the decisionmaker should not merely assume, without more, that the gun was "in furtherance of" the crime because it could be used for protection if the need arose -- the generic "just in case" rationale. Guns are typically present for protection; illegal activities -- covert activities -- require more protection than lawful ones. More Like This Headnote | Shepardize: Restrict By Headnote
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HN6Go to this Headnote in the case. In a prosecution under 18 U.S.C.S. § 924(c), merely possessing a firearm during the course of a conspiracy is not enough to support criminal liability. The government must demonstrate a specific nexus between the defendants' possession of the firearm and the goal of the conspiracy, or at least an overt act. More Like This Headnote | Shepardize: Restrict By Headnote
COUNSEL: For JOHN A. MARTINO, Plaintiff: Mitchell J. Notis, Annenberg & Levine, LLC, Brookline, MA.
For MASSACHUSETTS BAY TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY, Defendant: Walter B. Prince, Laurie F. Rubin, Prince, Lobel, Glovsky & Tye LLP, Daniel S. Tarlow, Prince, Lobel, Glovsky & Tye, Boston, MA.
JUDGES: NANCY GERTNER, U.S.D.J.
OPINION BY: NANCY GERTNER
OPINION: [*210]
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER RE: MOTIONS OF DEFENDANTS FELTON AND CHASE FOR JUDGMENT OF ACQUITTAL ON COUNT THREE OF THE INDICTMENT
September 13, 2002
Count Three of the Second Superceding Indictment ("Indictment") charges both defendants Leo V. Felton ("Felton") and Erica Chase ("Chase") with knowing possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) ("§ 924(c)" or "Section 924(c)"). n1 The crime of violence implicated here is [*211] conspiracy to make and possess a destructive device in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371 [**2] and 26 U.S.C. §§ 5822, 5841, and 5861(d) and (f). n2 The jury found both defendants guilty of this offense, based in part on the fact that a firearm was found in the apartment shared by Chase and Felton at 59 Salem Street, in the North End of Boston. Neither defendant was carrying the firearm at the time of his or her arrest.
n1 The defendants were charged with conspiracy to make and possess an unregistered destructive device (Count One); receipt of explosives with intent to kill or injure persons or damage property (Count Two-Felton only); possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence (Count Three); possession of a firearm (Counts Four and Five-Felton only); conspiracy to make and pass counterfeit notes (Count Six); making counterfeit notes (Count Seven); conspiracy to obstruct justice (Count Eight); obstruction of justice (Counts Nine and Ten); conspiracy to commit bank robbery and/ or to interfere with commerce by robbery (Count Eleven-Felton only); bank robbery (Count Twelve-Felton only). The jury found Chase not guilty of Count Seven, making counterfeit notes. They found the defendants guilty on all remaining counts. [**3]
n2 I found that this crime was a "crime of violence" as defined by 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3) in an earlier order dated July 8, 2002.
Both defendants moved for acquittal at the close of the government's case and at the close of the evidence. n3 See Fed. R. Crim. P. 29(a). They promptly renewed their motions after the jury returned its verdict. n4 See Fed. R. Crim. P. 29(c) (allowing defendant to make or renew motion for judgment of acquittal within seven days after jury reaches a guilty verdict).
n3 Felton moved for a judgment of acquittal on all counts at the end of the government's evidence while Chase moved for a judgment of acquittal only as to Count Three.
n4 After the jury reached its verdict, Felton renewed his motion for a judgment of acquittal only as to Counts Three and Eleven.
The crimes of which the defendants have been convicted are serious ones, and deeply, deeply, troubling. [**4] But my charge is to look, with a neutral eye, at the law -- whether it has been appropriately applied here; what precedent it sets for other cases.
On the other hand, HN1Go to the description of this Headnote.the standard on a motion for acquittal is a strict one: "if the evidence presented, taken in the light most flattering to the prosecution, together with all reasonable inferences favorable to it, permits a rational jury to find each essential element of the crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt, then the evidence is legally sufficient." United States v. Olbres, 61 F.3d 967, 970 (1st Cir. 1995).
At the same time, the critical issue here is a legal one, not a factual one. Does section 924(c) apply to these facts? Its language? Its legislative history? The decisional law interpreting it? On this issue, I write on nearly a clean slate. There is virtually no precedent for applying this section to facts like those present in the case at bar.
After reviewing the transcripts of the trial, and counsel's submissions, I hereby ORDER that the defendants' motions for a judgment of acquittal as to Count Three of the Indictment is GRANTED. Felton's motion for a judgment of acquittal on Count Eleven [**5] of the Indictment is DENIED.
One further note: The act of possessing the gun that is the subject of these motions will not go unpunished. The government has convicted Felton for possessing the gun in question through Count Four of the Indictment (felon in possession). The government will clearly argue during sentencing that I should apply the sentencing enhancement for gun possession under U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(b)(1), arguably increasing the sentencing range for the explosive device charge, but not triggering a consecutive mandatory minimum term under § 924(c). See United States v. Juan, 59 F. Supp. 2d 210, 214-217 (D. Mass. 1999).
[*212] I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND
A. The Purchase of the Gun and Chase's Statements to James Niemczura
In March 2001, while she was living in Indiana, Erica Chase obtained a gun, a 40 caliber Iberia semi-automatic pistol, from her employer, John Gaunder ("Gaunder"). Gaunder testified that Chase called him twice to arrange for the purchase of a gun and expressed an interest in purchasing a second gun. When he refused to sell her a second gun, she told him that if he later came across any other guns, she would be interested in buying [**6] them.
To James Niemczura ("Niemczura"), her friend, Chase reported that the gun was "for protection." Trial Transcript ("Tr.") 842. When asked what kind of protection she needed, Niemczura reported that Chase said, "from anyone trying to interfere with her plan." Tr. 847.
The government focuses on this statement as an important component of its claim that possession of the firearm was "in furtherance of" a conspiracy to make an explosive device. First, it should be noted that the statement -- characterizing her purpose in purchasing the gun -- is admissible only against Chase. Niemczura is not a co-conspirator. n5 See United States v. Patterson, 644 F.2d 890 (1st Cir. 1981) (HN2Go to the description of this Headnote.although a defendant's statement is admissible against defendant as a party admission under Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(2)(A), it may be used against co-conspirator defendant only if found to be a co-conspirator statement under Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(2)(E)).
n5 During Niemczura's testimony, I gave a limiting instruction to this effect. Felton's counsel did not object to the testimony on the grounds of Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 20 L. Ed. 2d 476, 88 S. Ct. 1620 (1968).
Second, there is some question as to what the plan was at the time Chase made the statement, and to what degree it was coincident with the conspiracy charge -- conspiracy to make and possess an unregistered destructive device.
B. What Was the Plan at the Time the Gun Was Purchased?
That the plan concerned Felton and that it involved white supremacist and illegal activities seemed clear, based on all the evidence.
1. Chase's Characterization of the Plan to Niemczura (Admissible Only Against Chase)
Chase had shared with Niemczura the fact that she had corresponded with Felton (although they had never met face to face) while Felton was in prison, that she and Felton were going to "go down in history," that Niemczura would read about the details of her plan in the papers, and that they would become "outlaws." Tr. 847-48. She also told him that they were going to burn off their fingerprints and assume the identities of missing children, that they were going to "go around and be terrorists," but gave him no details of their plans in case he was ever questioned. n6 Id.
n6 Moreover, there was evidence that prior to meeting Felton, Chase had been a member of the World Church of the Creator, which the evidence suggested was an entity that espoused white supremacy and triggering a racial holy war.
2. Correspondence Between Chase and Felton (Admissible Against Both)
The Felton-Chase correspondence suggests the same themes -- white supremacist activities, committing crimes (including bombings) -- but offers no concrete plans or mention of a gun. n7
n7 One letter from Felton to Chase does mention bombs in a more general way. Felton described about how his head tattoos might limit his ability to commit crimes -- "Not to say there aren't vital actions that can be executed with whatever tattoos you like-there obviously are. Car bombs, deployment of nerve agents, sniping, and many other things can be done without the need to 'blend in.'"
The government introduced evidence of a substantial number of calls between Felton and Chase, coincident with Chase's purchase of the firearm.
Looking only at the evidence admissible against Chase, I conclude the following: While Niemczura indicated that Chase did not talk specifically about violent acts or explosive [**9] devices, n8 and while the Felton-Chase correspondence also dealt in generalities, a fact-finder could conclude that Chase's reference to "plan" covered all of these activities -- violent and non-violent, some included within § 924(c), some not. The question, as I describe below, is whether that conclusion fits the very specific language of § 924(c)-"possession" of a firearm, "in furtherance of "a crime of violence."
n8 When Niemczura was asked specifically about the details of the plan, he indicated that "all [he] knew about the plan" was that Chase was involved in counterfeiting and that he did not hear anything about violence in connection with the plan. Tr. 877. Niemczura also testified that Chase had taken money from him in order to buy a counterfeiting machine to finance her trip to Boston and "the plans that she had with Leo, after the trip to Boston." Tr. 845.
During the same period, Felton was acquiring books describing how to assume a new identity as well as how to [**10] make explosives and silencers, and was writing to other co-conspirators concerning a plan for a "museum." A co-conspirator, Michael Reid, wrote back to instruct him to "plan well and be careful ... Many 'dry runs.'" n9 A document given to visitors to the Holocaust Memorial in Washington, D.C. and a newspaper clipping regarding the Boston Holocaust memorial were found in the apartment shared by Chase and Felton.
n9 While there is no evidence that at the time Chase purchased the gun, that Felton's specific plans had been shared with her, she had surely joined the conspiracy as of that time.
5. Inferences From the Timing of Chase's Gun Purchase
While Chase was still in Indiana, in February 2001, Felton was released from prison and moved to Ipswich with his wife, Lisa Meetre Felton ("Meetre"). n10 Many years earlier, in November 1996, Meetre had obtained a gun other than the firearm charged in connection with Count Three for Felton. The jury found that this gun had been brandished in a bank robbery committed [**11] by Thomas Struss with Felton's aid, in February 2001. n11 Struss testified that Felton had enlisted him in the robbery in order to get money for white supremacist activities.
By February 27, 2001, however, after the bank robbery and in the middle of a carjacking, Struss was arrested with Meetre's gun. Around the end of March 2001, Felton indicated to Meetre that he intended to obtain another gun from "a man named Brad." Tr. 738-39. Chase, who had been in touch with Felton regularly, purchased her gun around the same time period, just prior to her meeting him and moving in with him at the Salem Street apartment.
[*214] 6. Kathy McGaffigan's Conversations With Chase and Felton About the Gun
In April 2001, Chase came to Boston and met Felton for the first time. On April 9, 2001, Chase met Felton with her friend, Kathy McGaffigan ("McGaffigan"). McGaffigan [**12] reported that Felton spoke about building a bomb, and the crime of "shooting niggers" in Chase's presence, but that she did not ever see him or Chase carrying the gun. However, Chase told McGaffigan that she would keep the gun when she and Leo went out together because Leo was not allowed to possess a weapon. n12
n12 Again, this statement is only admissible against Chase. The government has not suggested that McGaffigan was a co-conspirator at the time of this conversation.
7. McGaffigan's Retrieval of the Gun and the Condition of the Felton-Chase Apartment
After Chase's and Felton's arrest, Chase called McGaffigan and asked her to remove items from the 59 Salem Street apartment, including counterfeit money, white supremacist literature, a 50 pound bag of ammonium nitrate, and a gun. The gun, which was loaded, was on the night stand in the bedroom, the same room as the bag of ammonium nitrate. Chase and Felton lived in that apartment; their personal effects were within it.
II. LEGAL ANALYSIS [**13]
Felton and Chase claim that there is insufficient evidence to find them guilty of the crime of possession of a firearm in furtherance of the conspiracy to make and possess a destructive device. In support of this claim, each defendant claims that the connection between the firearm and the underlying crime of violence is too tenuous to support a conviction. In addition, Felton challenges the jury's conclusion that he possessed the firearm at all.
The central question, which is a difficult one, is what "possession" of a firearm "in furtherance of" a crime of violence means under Section 924(c). Section 924(c) says in pertinent part:
HN3Go to the description of this Headnote.any person who, during and in relation to any crime of violence or drug trafficking crime (including a crime of violence or drug trafficking crime that provides for an enhanced punishment if committed by the use of a deadly or dangerous weapon or device) for which the person may be prosecuted in a court of the United States, uses or carries a firearm, or who, in furtherance of any such crime, possesses a firearm, shall, in addition to the punishment provided for such crime of violence or drug trafficking crime, [be sentenced to an [**14] additional term of years].
18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A) (emphasis added). HN4Go to the description of this Headnote.In effect, § 924(c) has two parts: The prosecution must show beyond a reasonable doubt (1) a nexus between the weapon and the defendant as established by the defendant's actual or constructive possession of the weapon, and (2) some "specific nexus" between the firearm and the predicate offense. United States v. Mackey, 265 F.3d 457, 462 (6th Cir. 2001). See also United States v. Timmons, 283 F.3d 1246, 1253 (11th Cir. 2002). Where the defendant brandishes or actively carries the weapon, there is little problem with either prong -- he plainly has dominion over the weapon and is using it in the crime. The problem here is that there was no brandishing or active use. The gun, everyone agrees, was only "possessed." n13
n13 Felton has challenged the conclusion that he possessed the gun at all. However, given its physical location, his admissions, and inferences from the timing of the gun's purchase, a fact-finder could conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that he had constructive possession of the gun.
[*215] Moreover, the nexus between the firearm and the predicate offense is complicated by the fact that the predicate offense is a conspiracy charge, addressing conduct over a several month period, even multiple goals. Are the requirements of the section met if the gun "furthered" some overt act of the conspiracy, even if it was not the ultimate goal, or some other illegal act, like bank robbery, which is not charged in Count Three?
To the government, the issue is clear: Felton needed a gun because he no longer had his ex-wife's gun. Chase purchased a gun as part of the Chase-Felton "plan." The plan included manufacturing bombs as well as other tasks such as counterfeiting and conceivably identity fraud. n14 The gun was found in the same room as the explosive materials and counterfeit currency. Thus, the gun was possessed in furtherance of that plan, which included the crime of violence charged here.
I think the issue is more complex: The gun played no role in the conspiracy to manufacture a bomb. The ammonium nitrate and the coffee maker (whose wiring was presumably used for a bomb) were purchased lawfully -- indeed, through Lisa Meetre's credit card. The detonators, so called "bird bombs," were ordered by catalogue and sent to Lisa Meetre's home.
While the gun was clearly bought in knowing preparation for some illegal activities, as evidenced by Chase's reference to a plan and the timing of the purchase relative to Felton's comments to Meetre, the question is whether the statute requires a more direct connection -- that it was an integral part of the specific illegal activity charged in Count Three, the conspiracy to make and possess an unregistered destructive device. n15 The evidence raises a number of questions: (1) What if the evidence suggests that the gun was related to crimes other than the substantive one charged? Chase and Felton, for example, might have felt vulnerable to thieves stealing their counterfeit bills or the money Felton had obtained through the bank robbery with Struss. While counterfeiting is one of the overt acts of Count Three, the conspiracy to [**17] make and possess a destructive device, bank robbery is not. n16 (2) What if the evidence is ambiguous concerning which crime the gun was facilitating, the overt act, or one not charged in Count Three?
n15 Count Three charges the defendants with possessing the firearm in furtherance of the specific crime of violence charged in Count One of the Indictment, namely conspiracy to make and possess an unregistered destructive device. If the evidence showed that the gun was possessed to further a crime, it would not qualify for treatment under the statute.
n16 Paragraph 10(9) of the Indictment describes the overt act of Felton's sending counterfeit money to Chase in Indiana, "in part, to pay for her expenses to drive to Boston to join him."
To be sure, it does not take much to imagine how a gun might be generally connected to this crime, or any other crime -- if anyone resisted the placement of the bomb, to secure a getaway, etc. -- but that would be speculation. Criminals purchase guns for such contingencies in [**18] every case. If that is enough, any possession of a gun, by someone also committing a crime of violence or drug trafficking offense would be sufficient -- the "just in case" scenario.
What then did Congress mean when it included the language possession "in furtherance of" the crime of violence?
[*216] A. Historical Background of the Statute
Pub.L. No. 90-615, 82 Stat. 1214 The original version of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) was enacted as part of the Gun Control Act of 1968. (codified as amended at 18 U.S.C. §§ 921-928 and scattered sections of 26 U.S.C.) (1988 & Supp. IV 1992). Over the next several decades, the law was amended to impose ever more severe penalties when firearms were involved in the commission of a felony. n17
n17 For a good overview of the historical changes to Section 924(c), see generally, Smith v. United States and the Modern Interpretation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c): a Proposal to Amend the Federal Armed Offender Statute, 69 Notre Dame L. Rev. 815, 823-26 (1994).
In its first incarnation, the statute imposed a mandatory minimum sentence of between one and ten years upon an offender who "uses" or "carries a firearm unlawfully during the commission of any felony." n18 In 1984, with the enactment of Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 ("CCCA"), n19 Congress made several significant changes to Section 924(c). Unlike the original version, the amended section did not contain a requirement that the carrying of a firearm during a felony be "unlawful." This change was based on a determination by Congress "that persons who are licensed to carry firearms and abuse that privilege by committing a crime with the weapon ... are as deserving of punishment as a person whose possession of the gun [is unlawful]." n20
n18 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) (1982). The statute provided in relevant part:
Whoever--
(1) uses a firearm to commit a felony for which he may be prosecuted in a court of the United States or
(2) carries a firearm unlawfully during the commission of any felony for which he may be prosecuted in a court of the United States, shall in addition to the punishment provided for the commission of such felony, be sentenced to a term of imprisonment for not less than one year nor more than ten years.
Id. [**20]
n19 Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, Pub.L. No. 98-473, 98 Stat. 1837 (codified as amended in scattered sections of 18 U.S.C. and 28 U.S.C.).
n20 Continuing Appropriations, 1985 -- Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, S.REP. NO. 225, 98th Cong., 1st Sess. 314 n.10 (1983), reprinted in 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3182, 3492 n.819.
Nevertheless, Congress was concerned about the extension of the statute to lawful possession. The addition of the "in relation to" language was intended to "preclude its application in a situation where the gun's presence played no part in the crime." n21
Evidence that the defendant had a gun in his pocket but did not display it, or refer to it, could nevertheless support a conviction for 'carrying' a firearm in relation to the crime if from the circumstances or otherwise it could be found that the defendant intended to use the gun if a contingency arose or to make his escape ... Moreover, the requirement that the firearm's use or possession be 'in relation to' the crime would preclude its application in a situation where its presence played no part in the crime, such a gun carried in a pocket and never displayed or referred to in the course of a pugilistic barroom fight.
These concerns were exacerbated in 1986 when the statute was amended by the Firearms Owners' Protection Act, n22 to be applicable to drug offenses as well as crimes of violence. n23 In effect, the initial [*217] versions of the statute were directed to gun violence as was commonly understood, to situations in which guns were brandished or carried. When Congress extended the statute to cover drug offenses, as well as crimes of violence, it had to deal with special problems. Unlike the crimes under the earlier version of the statute, drug transactions, at least on the surface, were apparently consensual, a willing buyer and a willing seller. Violence was threatened, but not always overtly. So, courts struggled to stretch the "uses" and "carries" language to cover the presence of guns at the scene of a drug transaction.
I review this history -- even though it predates the version of the statute applicable here -- because it shows the kinds of situations with which Congress and the courts were concerned, situations very different from the case before me.
B. Case Law Until 1998
The three most commonly espoused theories of "use" were as follows: (1) The defendant "used" the firearm as an item of barter in a guns-for-drugs trade, see Smith v. United States, 508 U.S. 223, 240-41, 124 L. Ed. 2d 138, 113 S. Ct. 2050 (1993); (2) the fortress theory -- when firearms and narcotics are found on the premises and the firearm is under the control of the defendant, see, e.g., United States v. Critton, 43 F.3d 1089, 1096-97 (6th Cir. 1995) (discussing the fortress theory and holding that weapons are used or carried, for § 924(c) purposes, when it reasonably appears that weapons were in the defendant's actual or constructive possession and were used to protect drugs); United States v. McFadden, 13 F.3d 463, 465 (1st Cir. 1994) (finding that the presence of a firearm for protection created a drug fortress); United States v. Wilson, 884 F.2d 174, 177 (5th Cir. 1989) [**23] (recognizing the fortress theory where firearms were placed for ready use); United States v. Matra, 841 F.2d 837, 843 (8th Cir. 1988) (finding that firearms are used or carried "during and in relation to" the drug crime when they are intended to protect drugs or otherwise facilitate the crime); and (3) the emboldening theory -- where the defendant "used" the firearm by deriving confidence (becoming "emboldened") by its presence because it was hidden nearby and accessible. See, e.g., United States v. Salazar, 66 F.3d 723, 728 (5th Cir. 1995) (finding that § 924(c)(1) is satisfied if a defendant used or carried a firearm to embolden himself, to protect himself, or to intimidate others); United States v. Stewart, 779 F.2d 538, 540 (9th Cir. 1985) (holding that there is a § 924(c)(1) violation if the circumstances show that the firearm had a role in the crime by emboldening the defendant). Significantly, none of these theories would have been sufficient to establish a § 924(c) offense in this case.
The Supreme Court's decision in Bailey v. United States, 516 U.S. 137, 133 L. Ed. 2d 472, 116 S. Ct. 501 (1995), made [**24] some of these theories problematic under the pre-1998 "uses" and "carries" language of the statute. In Bailey, the defendant's Section 924(c) conviction was based on a loaded pistol that the police found inside a bag in his locked car trunk, which they found pursuant to an arrest for possession of cocaine found in the car's passenger compartment. In the related case, Robinson v. United States, the unloaded, holstered, firearm that provided the basis for Robinson's Section 924(c) conviction was found in a trunk in her bedroom closet after she was arrested for a number of drug related offenses. The D.C. Circuit had held that one "used" a gun in violation of the statute whenever one put the gun in a place from which one or one's agent can gain access if necessary to facilitate a drug crime. Bailey, 516 U.S. at 141.
The Supreme Court reversed, holding that a defendant who passively stores a [*218] firearm for later use cannot be considered either "using" or "carrying" a firearm for § 924(c) purposes. The lower court's "accessibility and proximity" test simply went too far; "nearly every possession of a firearm by a person engaged in drug trafficking would satisfy the [**25] standard," thereby erasing the line that the statutes had tried to draw around "uses" and "carries." Id. at 144. In Bailey, the Supreme Court instead interpreted "use" to mean "active employment of the firearm by the defendant." Id. at 143 (emphasis in original). The Court concluded, "Had Congress intended possession alone to trigger liability under § 924(c)(1), it easily could have so provided." Id.
C. 1998 Amendment
The most recent amendment to Section 924(c), passed in November 1998, effectively took up the Court's challenge. Congress added the language of "possesses a firearm" to the "uses or carries" language. n24 The debate surrounding that change mirrored the earlier one, on the one hand, concerns about extending the extraordinary penalties of the statute to those whose possession of a firearm was essentially peripheral to the crime of violence, and on the other the linkage of drugs and guns, even when the gun was not brandished or actively used.
Congress effected a compromise. It added "possesses" but required that the possession be "in furtherance of" the crime. Possession "in relation to" a crime of violence, the language modifying "use or carries," was not enough. Significantly, the legislative history notes: "The Committee believes that 'in furtherance of' is a "slightly higher standard, and encompasses the 'during and in relation to language.'" n25 The legislative history further cited to the dictionary definition of the terms, defining "furtherance" as the "act of furthering, helping forward, promotion, advancement or progress." n26 Taking a cue from conspiracy law, the Committee added:
The government must clearly show that a firearm was possessed to advance or promote the commission of the underlying offense. The mere presence of a firearm in an area where a criminal act occurs is not a sufficient basis for imposing this particular mandatory sentence. Rather, the government must illustrate through specific facts, which tie the defendant to the firearm, that the firearm was possessed to advance or promote the criminal activity. n27
With the "in furtherance of" language, the Congress excluded from coverage [**27] not merely the ornamental gun -- the antique gun mounted on the wall -- but also guns that are accidentally present or even intentionally placed so long as they are not related to the crime at bar.
n25 H.R.REP. NO. 105-344 (1997), 1997 WL 668339, at *11-12 (footnotes omitted). See also United States v. Iiland, 254 F.3d 1264, 1274 (10th Cir.2001) (explaining that "in furtherance of" is a higher standard than "during and in relation to").
While the legislative history does not say so explicitly, two issues seem clear: HN5Go to the description of this Headnote.First, the decisionmaker should not merely assume, without more, that the gun was "in furtherance of" the crime because it could be used for protection if the need arose. -- the generic "just in case" rationale. As I have noted, guns are typically present for protection; illegal activities -- covert activities -- require more protection than lawful ones. [**28] If it is enough to assume that a gun was there to protect the [*219] illegal activities, then the "in furtherance of" language would be satisfied in each and every case. n28 Second, Congress focused almost exclusively on the particular problem of drug cases -- the kinds of concerns that the pre-1998 case law had raised.
n28 Significantly, the House section by section analysis of the changes in Section 924(c) suggests that the facts of Bailey -- gun in the trunk of the car, drugs in the passenger compartment -- would not have met the possession "in furtherance of" standard.
The House report noted that the only testimony linking the gun to Bailey was an expert who noted that "drug dealers frequently carry a firearm to protect themselves, as well as their drugs and money," the generic argument described above. The report notes:
Standing on its own, this evidence may be insufficient to meet the 'in furtherance of' test. The government would have to show that the firearm located in the trunk of the car advanced or promoted Mr. Bailey's drug dealing activity. The Committee believes that one way to clearly satisfy the 'in furtherance of' test would be additional witness testimony connecting Mr. Bailey more specifically with the firearm.
The post-1998 case law is helpful but not dispositive. Again, all of the circuit court cases addressing the new "in furtherance of" language of Section 924(c) involve drug dealing, where guns arguably are possessed to make sure the drugs are secured, to make certain that no one will "rip off" the dealer, and to make certain that the purchaser pays.
In United States v. Mackey, 265 F.3d 457 (6th Cir. 2001), for example, the police arranged for the purchase of crack cocaine by a confidential informant in a particular house. The following day, the police executed a warrant for the search of the house and found crack outside of the house and a loaded shotgun in the living room near a scanner, electronic scales, and razor blades. The house did not function as a residence. It was plainly a place of business -- no kitchen implements, no food. The Court found that the firearm qualified as possession "in furtherance of" the drug activities because it was strategically located so that it was quickly and easily available for use, applying the factors originally articulated in United States v. Ceballos-Torres, 218 F.3d 409, 414-415 (5th Cir. 2000). [**30] n29
n29 The factors identified by the Ceballos-Torres court to determine whether the possession of a firearm was in furtherance of a underlying drug offense include: "the type of drug activity that is being conducted, accessibility of the firearm, the type of the weapon, whether the weapon is stolen, the status of the possession (legitimate or illegal), whether the gun is loaded, proximity to drugs or drug profits, and the time and circumstances under which the gun is found." Ceballos-Torres, 218 F.3d at 414-415.
In Ceballos-Torres, the loaded gun was on top of the bed, and the drugs were in the closet. The court noted that mere presence was not enough and that the evidence had to be more specific to the particular defendant, showing that his or her possession "actually furthered the drug trafficking offense." Id. (Emphasis added). As in Mackey, the trafficking was taking place on that site. The court found that a loaded handgun in plain view on a bed furthered the enterprise. [**31] See also United States v. Iiland, 254 F.3d 1264, 1273 (10th Cir. 2001) (requiring a "direct connection" between the firearm and the drug offense, that the gun possession "furthered, promoted or advanced [the] illegal drug activity"); United States v. Timmons, 283 F.3d 1246, 1253 (11th Cir. 2001) (finding that loaded firearms in close proximity to crack cocaine in apartment were sufficient to support a conviction under Section 924(c)); United States v. Wahl, 351 U.S. App. D.C. 284, 290 F.3d 370, 376-377 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (holding that gun recovered near cocaine and cash [*220] in apartment led to reasonable inference that gun provided defense in furtherance of drug trafficking).
Do I take the Mackey, Ceballos-Torres line of cases to mean that proximity and accessibility to the implements of the crime -- any crime -- is enough for a Section 924(c) violation? Do I simply substitute ammonium nitrate and wiring for drugs, and note that the gun was in close proximity -- the court says "strategically located", Mackey, 265 F.3d at 461 -- to these implements? Is the physical location coupled with inferences from the other evidence sufficient to meet [**32] § 924(c)'s standards? Or do I distinguish between the kinds of factors that make possession relevant in a drug case from the kinds of factors present here?
One key distinction between the case at bar and cases involving drug trafficking is that here there was no reason to believe that Felton or Chase would have any contact with strangers in their apartment, where the gun was found. In contrast, in drug trafficking cases, the defendants regularly brought customers into the site where the gun or guns were found in order to deal drugs. The presence of a gun could "provide[] protection in case a drug deal in the apartment turns sour" or act as a deterrent to anyone thinking about stealing the drugs or proceeds during a transaction. Ceballos-Torres, 218 F.3d at 412. There is no indication that the gun played any such role in the Felton-Chase apartment.
Moreover, unlike the drug trafficking cases, the items that the gun was supposedly meant to protect here were both relatively worthless and lawful to obtain. A disassembled coffee maker has little value and is unlikely to be a target for theft. And although an assembled destructive device is illegal to possess, possession [**33] of the unassembled components is not, in itself, a crime. As a result, a conclusion that Felton or Chase possessed the gun in order protect against someone stealing or interfering with these valueless and lawfully obtained items becomes even more tenuous.
If the offense were the substantive charge, the manufacture of the destructive device itself, the inquiry would be somewhat easier. What facts tie the gun to the defendant's specific substantive activities in manufacturing a bomb? In what specific ways did it advance that activity? The mere presence of the gun in the apartment where the bomb was assembled would not necessarily be enough.
While the conspiracy charge broadens the crime to dates, times and acts far beyond the actual manufacture of the destructive device, there are limits. HN6Go to the description of this Headnote.Merely possessing a firearm during the course of the conspiracy is not enough to support criminal liability. See United States v. Lampley, 127 F.3d 1231, 1241 (10th Cir. 1997) (holding that under the "carry" prong of Section 924(c), "mere carrying of the gun temporally to the conspiracy is not sufficient to meet the 'during and in relation to' element [of Section 924(c)] ... Some [**34] further nexus must be shown, such as an overt act of planning for, preparation for, or agreement to the conspiracy.") The government must demonstrate a specific nexus between the defendants' possession of the firearm and the goal of the conspiracy, or at least an overt act.
To be sure, the government's case involves more than simply the proximity of the gun to the unassembled bomb components, but not close enough. Chase's reference to a "plan," coming months before she arrived in Boston and met Felton face to face, when "plans" of all kinds were imagined in their correspondence, was ambiguous. Likewise were Felton's references to the activities in which he intended to engage. There were multiple plans -- [*221] some charged in Count Three, some not, some including Chase, some not, some qualifying as a crime of violence, some not, and some listed as an overt act in the conspiracy (like counterfeiting), some not. No witness testified that he or she saw either defendant carrying this gun, with the sole exception of the individual from whom Chase initially obtained it. Neither defendant was armed when he or she was arrested. While the Chase-Felton correspondence, and Felton's correspondence [**35] with other coconspirators was voluminous, this gun was nowhere mentioned.
As I noted earlier, one can surely speculate how the gun might be used to facilitate the bomb making conspiracy, how it might be used to effect a getaway, to prevent someone from interfering with the bomb's placement. But section 924(c) requires a more specific inquiry. One can speculate in a similar fashion in connection with virtually any crime. If this is sufficient, we will have moved a considerable distance from the brandishing and carrying cases, and even from the extension of those cases to possession in furtherance of drug transactions.
Under the circumstances, I am obliged to conclude that Count Three must be dismissed with respect to both defendants.
III. COUNT ELEVEN -- CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT ROBBERY OF AN ARMORED CAR
In Count Eleven of the Indictment, Felton is charged with conspiracy to commit bank robbery and to interfere with commerce by robbery. Felton argues that this charge must be dismissed because no evidence supports it except for the alleged statement of Struss, Felton's co-conspirator. He cites United States v. Sepulveda, 15 F.3d 1161, 1181-2 (1st Cir. 1993) [**36] for the proposition that some extrinsic evidence must exist, aside from the proffered statement of a co-defendant, in order to support a conspiracy conviction.
However, Sepulveda held only that under Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(2)(E), a co-conspirator's hearsay statement may not be admitted unless some extrinsic proof of the defendant's involvement in the conspiracy exists. Id. Here, Struss, Felton's co-conspirator, testified in person at trial, and therefore, there was no hearsay issue. In addition, there was, in fact, extrinsic evidence apart from Struss' statements that supports Felton's involvement in the conspiracy to rob the armored car. Struss was arrested in New Jersey with the gun bought by Lisa Meetre. A reasonable inference from Struss' possession of this gun is that Felton gave it to him in order to commit the robbery. This corroborates Struss' testimony that he and Felton conspired to commit an armored car robbery in New Jersey.
As a result, Felton's motion for a judgment of acquittal on Count Eleven of the Indictment is DENIED.
IV. CONCLUSION
For the reasons stated above, my previous order denying (at that time) Chase's motion for judgment of acquittal [**37] on Count Three is hereby VACATED. After reconsideration, Chase's motion for judgment of acquittal on Count Three [docket entry # 166] is now GRANTED. Felton's renewed motion for acquittal [docket entry # 190] is GRANTED in part and DENIED in part. The motion is GRANTED with respect to Count Three of the Indictment and DENIED with respect to Count Eleven of the Indictment.
Given that his mother was Jewish, he has got to be the most obvious case of total self-hatred on record.
Yeah. Or hatred towards his parents for what he saw as terrible parenting. She did drop the ball and basically leave him to fend in a public system that is terrible, and his father wasn't exactly there either. I think at some point that was too much and a switch got shut off in his brain.
Posted: Mon 22 Jan 2007 05:30 Post subject: Leo Felton
It's amazing to me that nearly all the articles about Felton bewailed his white racial identity but seemed satisfied with the fact that our prisons are run by racial gangs.
Posted: Mon 22 Jan 2007 16:05 Post subject: Re: Leo Felton
Powell wrote:
It's amazing to me that nearly all the articles about Felton bewailed his white racial identity but seemed satisfied with the fact that our prisons are run by racial gangs.
True and very few articles have delved into how the threat of rape, physical and financial exploitation by non-white gangs led an intelligent, but violent and imbalanced person like Felton to seek refuge in the arms of a white supremacist prison gang. The only article I can think of is the one posted here some time ago whose author actually broached this question to Felton.
Ultimately, he needs to be locked up and he is responsible for his own behavior, but we shouldn't discount, no matter how uncomfortable, what motivated him to become an undercover mulatto white supremacist.
Posted: Tue 23 Jan 2007 05:38 Post subject: A Letter From Leo Felton
I looked and found two letters from Leo, and I'm posting the first of the pair below. You all should find it interesting, and I genuinely feel for the guy. He sounds like a relatively intelligent young man, though one terribly misinformed and misled by supremacist propaganda. We know now that the Aryan Invasion Theory is a myth (see Aryan Invasion -- History or Politics? by Dr. N.S. Rajaram), and that aryan actually refers to a noble person on the path of spiritual self-realization.
Similarly, most people – particularly white supremacists -- don’t know that the swastika is a famous solar symbol that has been used for luck and auspiciousness in India for millennia. Hitler, however, seized it, reversed it, rotated it off its central axis and made it a hated and feared emblem of evil. The word is derived from su vasti and means "the essence of everything good," a far cry indeed from the appalling perversion to which the Nazis twisted it. The swastika is common to the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions equally and was an Indian cultural archetypal symbol, not a sectarian mark. Hence its power and hence the disastrous energies released when it was reversed.
The primary lesson of the Bhagavad-gita is that we are not our bodies; rather we are the eternal sparks of consciousness, the spirit-souls, animating our fleshy forms. The practical application, particularly as it relates to the race notion is simple. You are not your body; therefore, you are not a representative of a racial or ethnic group. Studying the ancient Vedic spiritual philosophy residing in the Gita allows you to transcend race-consciousness and to realize your true nature as an eternal servant of God or Krishna.
One who has transcended race-consciousness probably wouldn’t be interested in a DNA test to calculate his background, but the gimmickry is surely alluring. I look forward to comments from the assembled throng
Quote:
9-22-2004
Dear Charles:
Your book and note arrived today – thank you so much.
Interesting that you should choose the Gita as a means of assailing (or transcending) the idea of race – as I’m sure you know, it and the other Vedic writings formed the main body of spiritual literature developed by the original Aryans, after they conquered the Indus valley and its indigenous inhabitants and instituted the first racial caste system in recorded history. I do realize that modern Hinduism is a far cry from its Aryan antecedents and that Western Hindus in particular are generally quite liberal as to questions of race, but I had never thought of the Gita as a means in itself of undermining ideas of “Black” and “White.” I will read your book with interest, and soon.
Not that you asked, but I’d like to mention something on the topic from another angle, which I learned about myself recently.
It began last year with a copy of National Vanguard magazine that was making its rounds on my block. Ntl Vanguard is published by the National Alliance, which is, as you probably know, an outspoken White separatist organization founded by the late William Pierce, author of The Turner Diaries. So this is probably as partisan a source as one can possibly find.
In this issue (Nov.-Dec.’03) there was an unusual article by a biologist involved in the White separatist movement, called “Race and the Genetic Woodpile: The Perils and Promises of Racially-Oriented Genetic Testing.” In it, the author attacks the tendency among his comrades to posit ideas about race that are in conflict with modern science and our growing knowledge of the human genome. He states categorically that there is non-White admixture in the gene pools of every European ethnicity, and that to require 100% racial purity of every member of their proposed White nationalist state, and of those Whites who advocate the creation of such a state, is not only pointless but destructive of their own cause. He writes at some length about a commercially available DNA test, done by DNA Print Genomics, in Sarasota, Florida, called the ABD 2.0 (“Ancestry By DNA”), which will tell anyone interested what their exact racial composition is, genetically speaking.
Hm. A DNA test. This sounded interesting. I had a friend go on DNA Print Genomics’ website and get me information on the whole thing. Nevermind the National Alliance and whatever the hell they were talking about -- I wanted to know, for reasons wholly unrelated to any “nationalism” what my racial composition is, specifically. So I sent this place my sample and a hundred bucks. A couple months later (this month) I got back the results: 46% Sub-Saharan African, 41% European, 13% Native American. Nothing earth-shattering I guess, but I was surprised by the Indian thing – apparently my mom isn’t quite as White as she thought she was.
I’m not “recommending” that anyone take the test, but I will say that having it myself I find these 3 simple percentages fascinating. 46, 41, 13. Amazing. Aside from the sheer geekery of being able to tell someone who might ask my nationality (which has certainly happened) the exact answer to their question, I’m sure there is no practical application for this data. But on a personal level it is profoundly interesting for me. The Indian thing, I guess. It’s as though I have elements of the whole organic history of this country physically running in my views. Red, White and Black.
Well, I thought I’d mention that, whatever it means. If you’re interested in the test, their website is dnaprint.com, and if you want to read that unusual article about White nationalism that isn’t altogether White, the Alliance’s site is natal.com, and I think it’s also on the author’s group’s site, legioneuropa.org. Whatever.
In any case, thanks again for your book, and I’ll read it shortly. Until some other time, take care, keep up the good work, and best of luck to you in all your efforts.
Posted: Wed 24 Jan 2007 01:07 Post subject: Leo Felton
Salsasin wrote:
Quote:
But he choose a European identity, not a mixed one And his African ancestry was more than his European identity. But yes we know how you love that African ancestry. He was predominantly of African ancestry.
Sorry, but 46% is NOT a majority! Felton's European identification in and of itself is fine. Salsasin is quick to defend the "choice" (which they never claimed to have until their lies were challenged) of people who claim to be "black" with with only a minority of that dreaded sub-Saharan DNA. Hell, Latinos in the U.S. have a history of getting themselves classified as "white" or "Spanish" even if they have little or no European ancestry.
Posted: Wed 24 Jan 2007 01:36 Post subject: Re: Leo Felton
Powell wrote:
Sorry, but 46% is NOT a majority!
Dream on. 3 parts 46, 41 and 13. 46 is the majority. Nice try.
Quote:
Felton's European identification in and of itself is fine.
Not when it is based on self hate.
Quote:
Salsasin is quick to defend the "choice" (which they never claimed to have until their lies were challenged) of people who claim to be "black" with with only a minority of that dreaded sub-Saharan DNA.
Oh please, your attempts at pseudologic are pathetic as usual. <sagascend> You claim to care about Felton's choice? <sagascend>. If he had been raised by his White side, I would have had no problem with his identification. But a troubled kid who chooses alliances because he needs to survive in jail and ends up hating both his procreator's ancestries is not a healthy identification. Get a clue.
Quote:
Hell, Latinos in the U.S. have a history of getting themselves classified as "white" or "Spanish" even if they have little or no European ancestry.
Spanish is a culture. So they identify as such because of the adoption of that culture. I have never met someone with mostly non European ancestry that identifies as White. Mixed or European, and I mean heavily mixed, not some. <sagscend>. And people don't go trying to kill the people their parents come from. SO your argument is a strawman as usual. <sagascend>.
Posted: Wed 24 Jan 2007 02:00 Post subject: Rule Violations
We have serious rule violations here:
Quote:
Salsassin:
Oh please, your attempts at pseudologic are pathetic as usual. You are the only one that hates the "dreaded SubSaharan ancestry" in you. You claim to care about Felton's choice? Naw, all you care is about yourself.
You must really hate having that African ancestry.
Quote:
3a
·Do not attribute motives to them. Do not try to ridicule them.
3d
· Do not discuss another members race without their permission and do not racially label a member against their wishes.
What African ancestry? You know nothing about my ancestry, and everything you THINK you know is wrong. You are unable to argue without insults and name-calling.
And Felton's NON-BLACK ancestry is still the majority. That's basic math.
Posted: Wed 24 Jan 2007 02:30 Post subject: Re: Rule Violations
Powell wrote:
We have serious rule violations here
Yes, you attributed motives to me and I rhetorted right back. And you discussed Mathew's identity and my ancestry against our wishes.
Quote:
3a
·Do not attribute motives to them. Do not try to ridicule them.
3d
· Do not discuss another members race without their permission and do not racially label a member against their wishes.
Quote:
What African ancestry? You know nothing about my ancestry, and everything you THINK you know is wrong. You are unable to argue without insults and name-calling.
Yeah right. The picture speaks volumes. And you began with the innuendo. You like making smart alec comments and you will get them back.
Quote:
And Felton's NON-BLACK ancestry is still the majority. That's basic math.
And his Non European ancestry is still the majority. And of that and everything else, his African ancestry is the majority. And yet he hates that ancestry.
Posted: Wed 24 Jan 2007 03:33 Post subject: Re: Rule Violations
Powell wrote:
We have serious rule violations here:
Quote:
Salsassin:
Oh please, your attempts at pseudologic are pathetic as usual. You are the only one that hates the "dreaded SubSaharan ancestry" in you. You claim to care about Felton's choice? Naw, all you care is about yourself.
You must really hate having that African ancestry.
Quote:
3a
·Do not attribute motives to them. Do not try to ridicule them.
3d
· Do not discuss another members race without their permission and do not racially label a member against their wishes.
What African ancestry? You know nothing about my ancestry, and everything you THINK you know is wrong. You are unable to argue without insults and name-calling.
And Felton's NON-BLACK ancestry is still the majority. That's basic math.
I concur. This has got to stop. First warning to Sal: AD's ancestry is not up for discussion unless she wishes it to be so.
'
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