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Date Posted: 15:08:51 01/17/03 Fri
Author: Queer
Subject: Pickerwood (R-Bigot)

http://www.clarionledger.com/news/0301/14/m01.html

Convicted cross-burner says he, Pickering are victims of politics

Sandy Hook man expresses regret, says business lost

By Ana Radelat
Clarion-Ledger Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Daniel Swan, the Mississippi cross-burner whose potential prison sentence was reduced by embattled Judge Charles Pickering, says both he
and the judge are victims of political intrigue.

"Politics are hurting a good man like Pickering and have put me in a real bind," he said.

Swan, 29, of tiny Sandy Hook in south Mississippi, said his life went into free fall soon after President Bush nominated Pickering, a federal district judge in
Hattiesburg, for a seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Civil rights organizations, women's groups and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee vigorously fought the ap-pointment, arguing that Pickering was unfit.
To make their case, they publicized Pickering's intercession in the Swan case.

Prosecutors had planned to ask that Swan receive a seven-year prison sentence. Under pressure from Pickering, they agreed to ask for 27 months, which Swan
served.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, controlled by Democrats last year, killed Pickering's nomination on a party-line vote. Last week, Bush outraged Pickering's critics
by renominating the judge.

Swan said the controversy has "run (Pickering's) name into the ground."

Publicity about the cross-burning case, which had drawn little attention — even in Mississippi — before Pickering's nomination, has put Swan's small trucking
company out of business, he said.

"All of the sudden, all of my customers dried up," he said.

Swan now supports his pregnant wife and three small children by driving a truck for a neighbor. He has "wished a million times" that he had never helped burn an
8-foot cross on the lawn of Earnest and Brenda Polkey, an interracial couple who lived in Sandy Hook, his hometown.

Swan said he and a group of other young, white men were drinking in the parking lot of the Improve Grocery, whiling away the hours on the night of Jan. 8, 1994,
when a car filled with black men drove by.

"There was a lot of hooting and hollering," Swan said. Then one of his companions, a 17-year-old identified in court papers as "J.B.," came up with the idea of
burning a cross on the Polkeys' lawn, Swan said.

The men already had hoisted a dead skunk on a pole in front of the Improve Grocery and performed other pranks that night. To Swan, the cross-burning was just
another game.

Swan said he, J.B. and a third man, named Mickey Thomas, went to Swan's home, gathered some boards from an old hog pen and hammered a cross together. Swan
said he drove the cross and the men in his pickup to the Polkey home, where they propped the gasoline-doused cross on a cedar tree and struck a match.

"The cross made a big old light and then the gasoline burned off," Swan said.

"There wasn't even any damage to the cedar tree."

The men drove off that night but were arrested later in a federal investigation of the incident.

J.B., who Swan says was the ringleader of the group, reached a deal with prosecutors that placed him on home detention for six months and one year of probation.
Thomas was deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial. He received the same deal as J.B.

Swan was the only one of the three defendants who had faced the possibility of serious prison time. Prosecuted under a federal statute that covers the use of fire in
the commission of a felony, he could have received a minimum of seven years in prison.

Swan said he's grateful Pickering fought to have his potential sentence reduced.

"He was sworn to be honest and fair when he took office, and that's what he was, honest and fair," Swan said.

But Brenda Polkey has asked the Judiciary Committee to oppose Pickering's nomination to the higher court.

"My faith in the justice system was destroyed when I learned about Judge Pickering's efforts to reduce the sentence of Mr. Swan," Polkey wrote in a letter to the
panel.

Pickering said he urged prosecutors to lessen Swan's potential sentence because he believed Swan's punishment was unfair based on what the other two defendants
received. Pickering called Assistant Attorney General Frank Hunger — a fellow Mississippian and former Vice President Al Gore's brother-in-law — to "express my
frustration with the gross disparity in sentence recommended by the government and my inability to get a response from the Justice Department in Washington."
Hunger told Pickering he couldn't help him.

Third District Republican Rep. Chip Pickering, the judge's son, said his father had no sympathy for Swan.

"He condemned him strongly at sentencing, but he believed the prosecutors were punishing most severely the wrong person," the younger Pickering said.

"They let the ringleader with a long history and pattern of racial hate and violence walk with no jail time."

Pickering was convinced J.B. was the organizer of the crime. Before the cross-burning, J.B. vandalized the street in front of the Polkey home and shot a .22-caliber
bullet into the room where their 3-year-old child was sleeping, according to court papers.

Swan admitted at trial he had used a racial epithet. But he says he's no racist.

"I'm guilty of sticking the cross up and burning it," he said. "But I'm not guilty of all the hate crime things they accused me of."

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