Alabama Man Sentenced for Attempting to Hire Ku Klux Klan to Kill Neighbor
Acting Assistant Attorney General Jocelyn Samuels for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance for the Northern District of Alabama and FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard D. Shwein Jr. announced that a Talladega County, Ala., man was sentenced in federal court today for attempting to hire members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) to murder an African-American neighbor
Allen Wayne Densen Morgan, 29, of Munford, Ala., pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Karon O. Bowdre on Oct. 24, 2013, to one count of using and causing someone else to use interstate facilities and travel with the intent to commit a murder-for-hire. At today’s sentencing hearing, Judge Bowdre sentenced Morgan to serve 72 months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release.
Morgan previously admitted that in August 2013, he attempted to hire members of the KKK to murder his neighbor. According to Morgan’s plea agreement, on Aug. 22, 2013, Morgan spoke on the phone with an undercover FBI agent, who identified himself as a KKK member. The men arranged to meet three days later at an Oxford, Ala., motel to discuss payment for the murder. In that phone conversation, Morgan used a racial slur to describe the man he wanted killed and bragged that he had just fired several shots toward the man to intimidate him. Morgan also described, in detail, how he wanted the man to be “hung from a tree like a deer and gutted,” to have body parts cut off and to “die a slow, painful death.” On August 25, Morgan met with FBI agents posing as members of the KKK. Morgan offered a watch, a necklace and a gun as payment for the murder and gave explicit directions for the man’s torture and murder.
“The defendant attempted to have his neighbor tortured and murdered by the KKK,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Samuels. “Today’s sentence demonstrates that the Justice Department will continue to aggressively prosecute those who act on their racial hatred by seeking to inflict such acts of violence on others.”
“Mr. Morgan detailed his calculated desire to end his neighbor’s life through the most brutal and heinous means,” said U.S. Attorney Vance. “Today’s sentence reinforces that vigilantism is not acceptable in our society and we will prosecute that crime.”
This case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Pat Meadows and Brad Felton of the Northern District of Alabama and Civil Rights Division Trial Attorney David Reese.
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