[This columnist says that Bill White was unlawfully imprisoned, yet brags that he will be unable to get a fair jury in a lawsuit, as if this was a good thing. The media just drips with anti-White venom on every page. -- TW]

White might find jury award is a tough sell
By Dan Casey

Roanoke's Neo-Nazi responds, and estimates the feds will pay him $2.5 million in a damages settlement
My July 23 column on Roanoke landlord and Adolf Hitler admirer William A. White prompted a letter from the neo-Nazi himself.

Charges that he encouraged violence against a federal juror in Chicago have been dropped.

White is still in custody and charged with threatening a New Jersey mayor, a Canadian lawyer, newspaper columnist Leonard Pitts and others. And as of this writing, White was en route back to a Roanoke jail, courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

I am betting those charges also will be kicked on First Amendment grounds, as the Chicago charges were.

But if I'm correct, and if White is sincere in his letter, his legal battles are far from over.

White suggested he's going to file a civil rights lawsuit against the federal government, and he's already counting on a big fat payday from that.

"The current estimate of the wrongful imprisonment settlement the federal government will end up paying me is in excess of $2.5 million dollars (sic)," White wrote me.

"Because the judge ruled that I was imprisoned based on an indictment that did not state a crime and violated my First Amendment rights, the question of wrongful imprisonment is essentially decided -- all that is required, at this stage, is to file suit and prove damages.

"So I am looking forward to receiving my own personal stimulus package from the federal government, in the next two to three years."

(The full text of White's letter is posted on my blog).

Here's a confession: I have prejudged White's case. I would find for him on his wrongful imprisonment claim.

But by far, the most intriguing part of the passage above is "and prove damages."

One of the things plaintiffs depend on in (potentially) big lawsuits such as White's is that a jury will view them sympathetically.

For White, this could prove to be a bit of a problem.

Let's keep in mind that this is the guy who held a dinner party in a Chicago hotel in April 2008 to mark Adolf Hitler's birthday.

He dressed up in a Nazi costume and published photos of himself giving a stiff-armed salute in front of a cake dedicated to one of the greatest mass murderers in history.

After he objected to something written by Pitts, White published Pitts' home address and telephone number online and urged other neo-Nazis to call and visit the nationally syndicated columnist.

In October, shortly before then-Democratic nominee Barack Obama's first and only visit to Roanoke, White "published" on his Web site a magazine cover he designed. It featured a picture of Obama, with his head circled in a sniper's gunsights, with the headline, "Kill This Nigger?"

There are many, many more outrages White has perpetrated in the name of the First Amendment.

He's in his 30s now, and he's been figuratively yelling "fire" in a crowded theater ever since he was a high school student in Montgomery County, Md. For all of those reasons and more, White might not make the most sympathetic plaintiff.

So if I was on that jury, I would find that the feds had indeed violated White's rights.

And I would award White a dollar, fully mindful that his attorney would take one-third of that.

So welcome back to Roanoke, Bill White!

Good luck in finding a lawyer who will take that case.

And good luck in finding a sympathetic jury.

http://www.roanoke.com/columnists/casey/wb/215707

Full text of BW's letter to Casey here:

http://www.roanoke.com/columnists/casey/wb/215707