News - State
La. man appeals 6-month prison term for hate crime
Posted: Feb 22, 2012 9:33 AM by AP
Source: AP
MONROE, La. (AP) - A West Monroe man is appealing his six-month prison sentence for his role in a hate crime at a school.
A court filing Tuesday by 30-year-old Tony L. Johnson's attorney asks U.S. District Judge Robert James in Monroe to review the Feb. 7 sentence handed down by U.S. Magistrate Karen Hayes.
Johnson is one of three men who pleaded guilty last year to tying a noose around a dead raccoon's neck and hanging it from a flagpole outside Beekman Junior High School in Morehouse Parish in 2007.
Federal prosecutors said the men were angry that the school's new busing policy had increased the number of black students.
Hayes also sentenced James Lee Wallis Jr. to eight months in prison and sentenced his brother, Brian Wallis, to five months in prison.
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