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Pasco men who burned cross in black neighbor's yard sentenced to federal prison

 
Thomas Herris Sigler III was sentenced to 33 months in prison after pleading guilty.
Thomas Herris Sigler III was sentenced to 33 months in prison after pleading guilty.
Published Aug. 29, 2017

TAMPA — In 2012, a Port Richey couple found a cross burning in their yard. It was one night, Halloween, but the effects of the hate crime on the couple lasted much longer.

Two of the men responsible were sentenced Tuesday in federal court, where they heard words of the lasting pain and fear that they caused their victims: a black boyfriend and white girlfriend living in the neighborhood.

U.S. District Judge Mary Scriven sentenced Thomas Herris Sigler III to 33 months in prison and William A. Dennis to 21 months, each with three years of supervision after release.

The victims — identified just by their initials — were not in court Tuesday. Prosecutors said reliving the night is too much for "D.M.," the man, to bear.

His girlfriend, however, put her experience into words. In a victim impact statement read aloud by the judge, "K.L." said the crime changed both of their lives forever, in ways she presumed the felons could not imagine.

"It felt like we had our very own, personal group of terrorists," she wrote.

K.L. feared each day that authorities would bring her the news that her boyfriend had been killed. She sleeps with one eye open, she wrote, and always looks over her shoulder.

The men and some friends were having a party when they decided to build a cross from pieces of wood, douse it with flammable liquids, carry it to their neighbor's Seward Drive home, lean it against his mailbox, and set it aflame.

"I truly cannot imagine living with that much anger inside," the victim's statement read. She wrote that in her rural Midwestern upbringing, people got along and lived without such hate.

"But you showed me what hate is all about."

William Nolan, an attorney for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, called Sigler "a violent racist." Sigler admitted to punching D.M. in the face and repeatedly calling him racial slurs.

Both men had pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring with others to violate the housing rights of their neighbors.

Scriven gave each man a sentence at the upper boundary of his sentencing guideline range. She noted that they initially lied to local and federal investigators about their actions.

Each man expressed remorse in a statement to the court.

"I apologize to the courts for this mess. I apologize to the victims that were involved in this," Dennis said. Between long pauses, he said he prays for the couple and does not think of himself as hateful.

Later, Sigler said he was ashamed for his family and children and that he has used his time locked up to study the Bible. He also said he is coming to terms with his history of alcoholism, drug addiction and sexual abuse.

"I have been able to find healing, forgiveness and ultimately, love," Sigler said.

Burning a cross is historically a method used to intimidate black people. In April, Bill Morlin of the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that the Port Richey case shows "cross-burnings to instill fear in black Americans are not just footnotes in history books, but a continuing reality in the 21st century."

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In sentencing Dennis, Scriven said she would have considered a sentence above the guideline range. For both cases, prosecutors avoided pushing for increased sentences because the men pleaded guilty.

Another man, Pascual Carlos Pietri, who also participated in the cross burning, pleaded guilty in 2014 and is serving a 37-month prison sentence.

Contact Langston Taylor at ltaylor@tampabay.com. Follow @langstonitaylor.