Asheville, NC - (AP) A North Carolina man was convicted Friday of a charge he anonymously threatened to lynch a Muslim-American man who ran for a state Senate seat in Virginia, federal prosecutors said.

    Joseph Cecil Vandevere, 53, of Black Mountain, faces a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison following his conviction in federal court in Asheville, North Carolina, according to U.S. Attorney Andrew Murrayโ€™s office. A sentencing date wasnโ€™t immediately set.

    Vandevere, whose trial started Thursday, was charged in June with interstate communication of a threat to injure a person in connection with a tweet directed at candidate Qasim Rashid. The tweet included a picture of a lynching and read, โ€œVIEW YOUR DESTINY.โ€

    Rashid, an attorney who works on immigrant rights cases, posted a screenshot of the threatening tweet in March 2018 and reported it to the FBI.

    Rashid, who testified at the trial on Friday, said there would have been โ€œzero consequencesโ€ if he had reported such a threat in his native Pakistan. He said the juryโ€™s verdict is a powerful testament to the U.S. Constitutionโ€™s guarantee of โ€œequal protection and equal justice for all.โ€

    โ€œThey looked at the facts. They looked at the law. They applied it to the situation and came up with a just verdict,โ€ he said in a telephone interview.

    Rashid said the verdict doesnโ€™t end his fight against hate and intolerance.

    โ€œIโ€™ve had justice but there are many others who have not,โ€ he added.

    An attorney for Vandevere didnโ€™t immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the verdict.

    Rashid, a Democrat, lost his Nov. 5 bid to defeat an incumbent Republican state senator in Virginia.

    In September, U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn Jr. rejected Vandevereโ€™s argument that his indictment must be dismissed on First Amendment free speech grounds

    Vandevereโ€™s attorney, Andrew Banzhoff, claimed the communication in question was not a โ€œtrue threat.โ€

    โ€œIn 2019, the political arena necessarily includes the public exchange of political views that occurs daily on Twitter and other social media sites,โ€ Banzhoff wrote.

    Cogburn Jr. said he couldnโ€™t rule as a matter of law that the alleged threat was โ€œpolitical hyperboleโ€ or that โ€œno reasonable person would interpret this communication as a serious expression of intent to do harm.โ€

    The indictment identifies the victim only by the initials โ€œQ.R.โ€ Federal prosecutors didnโ€™t name Rashid in court filings but said the victimโ€™s political campaign started well after the threat was made โ€œand had no bearing on the threat.โ€

    Authorities also accused Vandevere of posting an anti-Semitic threat on a Florida synagogueโ€™s Facebook page.

    Investigators linked Vandevere to a threatening comment posted in February 2018 on the website of a synagogue in Plantation, Florida, according to an FBI agentโ€™s affidavit. A rabbi at Ramat Shalom Synagogue contacted the FBI after somebody using the name Bob Smith posted a โ€œdisturbingโ€ comment in response to the rabbiโ€™s post showing support for the Parkland, Florida, high school where a gunman killed 17 people earlier that month, the agent wrote.

    An โ€œopen source searchโ€ using Vandevereโ€™s telephone number linked him to the same Twitter account — with the handle โ€œDaDUTCHMAN5โ€ณ — that posted the threat against Rashid, according to the affidavit. The post was accompanied by a black-and-white photograph of the infamous 1915 lynching of a Jewish man, Leo Frank, in Marietta, Georgia.

    Twitter suspended the โ€œDaDUTCHMAN5โ€ account.

    ___

    Kunzelman reported from College Park, Md.


    News Hounds

    Pinned Items
    Recent Activities
    • Oricle27 unlocked the badge News Hound
      News Hound
      Community News Contributor To unlock the Newshound badge simply register as a member of the community and participate and engage with our community.
      0
      0
      0
      0
      0
      0
      Comments (0)
      Post is under moderation
      Stream item published successfully. Item will now be visible on your stream.
    There are no activities here yet