South Carolina moves to expel cross-burning couple from town as a 'public nuisance'

Authorities are trying to expel two people accused of racial terror tactics from their home in Conway, South Carolina by having them declared a "public nuisance," The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday.

"Fifteenth Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson is asking a court to declare the home a 'public nuisance' and remove the residents for at least a year," reported Allison Quinn.

In one supposed incident the previous Thanksgiving, the couple, Alexis Hartnett and Wordan Butler, went after their Black neighbors right next door; Hartnett reportedly "threatened and yelled racial slurs" while Butler posted a Facebook image of their house, writing, “With a cross in the lawn… Going to give my racist neighbors who don’t live here and you’ve been harassing me for three years a good scare for their health.”

A burning cross was erected near the house the next day.

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Richardson alleges that the two “have harassed, assaulted, and threatened their neighbors and people in the public areas” in this manner for years, and they will continue to be “a public nuisance to the harm and detriment of the public” unless evicted.

When similar incidents have occurred in other states, they are typically prosecuted under hate crime laws. South Carolina, however, is one of a small handful of states to have no hate crime statutes on the books, forcing authorities to resort to this more roundabout method of punishing them.

Sometimes these incidents get escalated to federal matters; in Gulfport, Mississippi, a man who burned a cross to intimidate Black neighbors was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison.