3 Men Get Prison for Hate Crime at Morehouse School

Three men have been sentenced to prison terms for tying a noose around a dead raccoon’s neck and hanging it from a flagpole to intimidate black students at a north Louisiana school.

U.S. Magistrate Karen Hayes in Monroe on Tuesday sentenced 25-year-old James Lee Wallis Jr., of Bastrop, to eight months in prison and sentenced his brother, 21-year-old Brian Wallis, of Conway, Ark., to five months in prison.

A third man — 30-year-old Tony L. Johnson, of West Monroe — was sentenced to six months in prison.

The three men pleaded guilty last year to charges they hung the dead raccoon outside Beekman Junior High School in Morehouse Parish in 2007 out of anger about the school’s new busing policy, which had increased the number of black students.

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