WASHINGTON (AP) — A choose on Friday awarded greater than $1 million to a Black church in downtown Washington, D.C. that sued the far-right Proud Boys for tearing down and burning a Black Lives Matter banner throughout a 2020 protest.
Superior Courtroom Related Decide Neal A. Kravitz additionally barred the extremist group and its leaders from coming close to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church or making threats or defamatory remarks in opposition to the church or its pastor for 5 years.
The ruling was a default judgment issued after the defendants failed to indicate up in courtroom to battle the case.
Two Black Lives Matter banners had been pulled down from Metropolitan AME and one other traditionally Black church and burned throughout clashes between pro-Donald Trump supporters and counterdemonstrators in December 2020.
The destruction came about after weekend rallies by hundreds of individuals in help of Trump’s baseless claims that he gained a second time period, which led to dozens of arrests, a number of stabbings and accidents to cops.
Metropolitan AME sued the Proud Boys and their leaders, alleging they violated D.C. and federal legislation by trespassing and destroying non secular property in a bias-related conspiracy.
Proud Boys chief Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, of Miami, publicly acknowledged setting hearth to at least one banner, which prosecutors mentioned was stolen from Asbury United Methodist Church.
In July 2021, Tarrio pleaded responsible to 2 misdemeanor felony prices of property destruction and tried possession of a high-capacity journal.
He was sentenced to greater than 5 months in jail.
Tarrio and different members of the Proud Boys had been individually convicted of seditious conspiracy prices as a part of a plot to assault the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a determined bid to maintain Donald Trump in energy after the Republican misplaced the 2020 presidential election.