Colorado couple found guilty over hate crime hoax meant to draw sympathy for black candidate

A Colorado couple who burned a cross in front of a black mayoral candidate’s campaign sign to generate voter sympathy was convicted Friday of conveying false information about a threat.Prosecutors argued that although Ashley Blackcloud, who is indigenous and Black, and Derrick Bernard, who is Black, orchestrated and broadcast the hoax to aid the candidate, their actions still amounted to a criminal threat.The cross burning happened in 2023 during the run-up to the mayoral election in Colorado Springs, the state’s second-largest city.Images and video of the episode were emailed to local news outlets to boost the campaign of Yemi Mobolade, now the city’s first black mayor.Blackcloud’s attorney did not deny in the trial this week that she participated in setting up the cross burning and defacing the sign.

Bernard denied participating but acknowledged during testimony that he disseminated the images even though he knew it was a hoax.Because cross burning is protected by the First Amendment, the case came down to whether the act was a threat.Prosecutors argued that even though Blackcloud’s and Bernard’s intention was to help Mobolade, he perceived the actions as a threat, with his family buying fire ladders and a medical trauma kit for their house.“What was Yemi and his family supposed to see through the flames? A joke? Theater?” said Assistant U.S.Attorneys Bryan Fields.

The defendants, he said, “needed the public to believe this was a real threat in order for it to have the effect that they wanted of influencing an election.”Fields likened it to a student who calls in a fake bomb threat at a school in order to avoid taking a test, forcing the school to evacuate and causing other students anxiety.Blackcloud’s defense attorney, Britt Cobb, said the cross burning was merely “meant to be a political stunt, political theater” to show that racism was still present in Colorado Springs.Blackcloud “did not mean this as a real threat of violence...