(NAME-MCE) Jury awards $2.5 million to teen beaten by Klan members

[KispokoT at aol.com]

CNN) -- A jury awarded $2.5 million in damages on  Friday to a Kentucky 
teenager who was severely beaten by members of a Ku  Klux Klan group because they 
mistakenly thought he was an illegal Latino  immigrant, the Southern Poverty 
Law Center said.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
Jordan Gruver, then 16, was targeted and beaten by  Klan members, his lawsuit 
alleged. 


 
 (http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/11/14/klan.sued.verdict/?iref=mpstoryview#) 
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 (http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/11/14/klan.sued.verdict/?iref=mpstoryview#)  

 



The jury found that the Imperial Klans of America and  its founder wrongfully 
targeted 16-year-old Jordan Gruver, an American  citizen of Panamanian and 
Native-American descent.  
The verdict included $1.5 million in compensatory  damages and $1 million in 
punitive damages against "Imperial Wizard" Ron  Edwards. 
The law center said before the verdict that a large  damage award could break 
the Klan group, allowing the teen and the law  center to seize the group's 
assets, including its headquarters, a 15-acre  compound in Dawson Springs, 
Kentucky. 
"We look forward to collecting every dime that we can  for our client and to 
putting the Imperial Klans of America out of  business," said SPLC founder and 
chief trial attorney Morris Dees, who  tried the case. 
Gruver, backed by the Southern Poverty Law Center,  filed the personal injury 
lawsuit last year seeking up to $6 million in  damages from the Imperial 
Klans of America and two of its leaders --  Edwards and "Grant Titan" Jarred R. 
Hensley. 
An all-white jury of seven men and seven women  deliberated for five hours 
after three days of testimony. The suit  alleged that Edwards, Hensley, and the 
Imperial  Klans of America as a whole incited its members to use violence 
against  minorities.  
"The people of Meade County, Kentucky, have spoken  loudly and clearly. And 
what they've said is that ethnic violence has no  place in our society, that 
those who promote hate and violence will be  held accountable and made to pay a 
steep price," Dees said. 
According to testimony, three members of the Klan  group confronted Gruver in 
July 2006 during a recruiting mission at the  Meade County Fair in 
Brandenberg, Kentucky. They taunted him with ethnic  slurs -- inaccurate ones -- spat on 
him and doused him with alcohol .Two  of the men, including Hensley, knocked 
Gruver to the ground and repeatedly  struck and kicked him. 
 
Ku Klux Klan
    *   Founded as violent white supremacist movement by  Confederate 
officers after the Civil War, lasted until the 1870s  
    *   Klan began again in 1915, still active today  
    *   Most recent surge of activity came during civil  rights movement of 
1960s  
    *   Membership exceeded 4 million in 1920s; now a few  thousand members 
in splinter groups
Source:  Encyclopaedia Britannica 
"All I could see was a bunch of feet," Gruver, now 19,  told the jury. "As 
they were kicking me, I prayed to myself. I said, 'God,  just please let me go. 
Please let me make it home.' " 
When the blows stopped, Gruver had a broken jaw,  broken left forearm, two 
cracked ribs and cuts and bruises.  
He testified that he has suffered permanent nerve  damage and psychological 
trauma. He doesn't leave his house and rarely  sleeps more than two hours at a 
time because he has nightmares, CNN  affiliate WLKY reported. 
Among the evidence the jury saw was a pair of  red-laced, steel-toed boots. A 
police witness testified that Hensley wore  the boots the night he and 
another Klansman attacked Gruver. 
Edwards acknowledged from the witness stand that the  boots were the "weapon 
of choice" for skinheads and that the red laces  carried special significance 
-- that "someone should shed blood for their  race." 
Also revealed during testimony: An alleged Klan plot  to kill the Southern 
Poverty Law Center's attorney, Morris Dees.  
 
Don't Miss
    *   _Teen's suit  seeks to bankrupt KKK_ 
(http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/11/12/klan.sued/index.html)   
    *   PDF:  _Read the  lawsuit_ 
(http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/11/12/klan.case.doc.pdf)  

Former Klansman Kale Kelly, once a member of Edwards'  inner circle, 
testified he was told to kill Dees because of the center's  lawsuit in Idaho against 
the Aryan Nations, a neo-Nazi supremacist  organization.  
The plot was thwarted by the FBI in 1999, according to  testimony.  
Kelly, who since has left the group, cried on the  witness stand during his 
testimony. 
Other former Klansmen also testified that they were  encouraged to use 
violence. One said he was conditioned to kill.  _Watch the former  Klansmen testify 
»_ 
(http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/11/14/klan.sued.verdict/?iref=mpstoryview#cnnSTCVideo)  
Gruver's assailants already have gone through the  criminal courts, striking 
plea bargains and serving time in the Kentucky  state prison system, according 
to court documents. The case was not  treated as a hate crime. 
Dees alleged that on the night in question -- July 29  and 30, 2006 -- 
Edwards "sent his agents out on a mission." During that  mission, which included 
recruiting and distributing Klan literature at the  fair, Gruver was beaten 
because the men mistakenly believed he was an  illegal immigrant. 
Edwards, who represented himself, told the jury he had  nothing to do with 
the attack. "I stay within the law. I don't break the  law," he said. 
At an earlier court deposition, Edwards demonstrated  his contempt for the 
center and its lawsuit by tattooing a profane  reference to it on his freshly 
shaved head. 
On its Web site, the Imperial Klans of America refers  to itself as a 
Christian organization exercising its rights of free speech  and assembly under the 
U.S. Constitution.  
The site carries this proviso: "If you are not of the  White race, this Web 
site is not for the likes of YOU!" It then goes on to  name the races and 
ethnicities it "hates," adding, "This is our God-given  right." 
The Web site disavows violence or any kind of criminal  activity.  
Edwards lives in a trailer on the Klan group's heavily  guarded, gated 
compound in rural Dawson Springs. The compound is the site  of the Klan's annual 
white power rally and music festival, know as "Nordic  Fest," according to the 
suit. 
It was at the compound, the suit alleges, that the  Klan group incited its 
members to use violence against minorities.  
Jury awards $2.5 million to teen beaten by Klan  members
The Klan seems to thrive during times of political and  financial turmoil, 
according to organizations that monitor its  activities. 
The first incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan was founded  by a group of 
Confederate generals at the end of the Civil War to promote  a white supremacist 
agenda. The Klan was driven underground, but re-formed  after World War I. Klan 
activity increased during the civil rights  movement of the 1960s, and has surged 
again since 2006 as a result of  opposition to gay marriage and immigration.  
There is no single, centralized Ku Klux Klan. The  Southern Poverty Law 
Center says the Imperial Klans of America is the  second largest KKK group after 
the Brotherhood of Klans Knights, based in  Marion, Ohio.  
Booth Gunter, the center's spokesman, said there are  34 named Klan 
organizations across the country, with 155 separate  chapters.  
The Anti-Defamation League estimates there are more  than 40 different Klan 
groups, with as many as 5,000 members in more than  100 chapters, or 
"klaverns," across the country. 
 
 

 




It is not the first time the Southern Poverty Law  Center has taken a 
supremacist group to court and won.  
In 2000, for example, the center won a  $6.3 million jury verdict that forced 
Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler  to give up the group's Idaho compound. 
In 1987, a $7 million verdict in  Mobile, Alabama, targeted the United Klans of 
 America


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