AMERICAN FRONT'S MARCUS FAELLA CONVICTED OF TWO COUNTS OF DOMESTIC TERRORISM

None of the campaigns to free Marcus Faella could save him. The American Front leader was convicted for planning to start a race war that we suppose now has to be put on hold. It had best be a permanent one.

Orlando Sentinel

KISSIMMEE — Marcus Faella stood silently and showed no emotion as a jury delivered a guilty verdict Friday on two charges that could send the American Front leader to prison for 30 years.

After deliberating for about five hours in Central Florida’s largest domestic-terrorism case, the jury found Faella, 41, guilty on two counts of teaching and conducting paramilitary training.

Immediately after the verdict was announced, Faella was handcuffed and ordered to be held without bail in Osceola County Jail as his sobbing wife, Patty, yelled out, “Marcus, I love you!”

The trial started Tuesday more than two years after the feds arrested Faella and 13 other American Front members accused of training for a race war. The American Front is one of the oldest continually active U.S. skinhead groups, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Faella, 41, was originally charged with conspiring to shoot into a building, two counts of teaching paramilitary training and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, according to court records. But after two days of testimony, two of the charges against Faella were dismissed Thursday.

Outside the courtroom, Faella’s attorney Ronald L. Ecker II said there had never been evidence of prejudice. Even the FBI informant paid $40,000 to infiltrate the group for a year testified he never saw anyone promote violence or speak of targeting minorities.

“We have to start the appellate process now,” Ecker said. “This guy’s 40 years old and he’s never been convicted of a crime. … He’s got unpopular views but he’s never acted upon those in any manner.”

Sentencing is set for 1:30 p.m. on Nov. 10. Faella faces up to 15 years in prison on each count.

While Faella said nothing in the courtroom, an hour before the verdict he was speaking in the hallway on his cell phone saying, “I’m in trouble for an incident that never happened and literature I never distributed.”

Prosecutor Sarah Hatch began her closing argument today by describing the American Front leader as a racist who trained his followers for violence against minorities.

“The law does not require us to wait until violence erupts and blood runs in the street,” she said, “We don’t want to say… ‘We could have stopped it.'”

After stating the remaining charges against him — two counts of conducting paramilitary training — Hatch said she had to prove his intent to start civil disorder.

Using an overhead projector, she showed a series of American Front flyers found in the Faella home.

One showed armed masked men lighting a Molotov cocktail above a message: “Because racial survival is never on the ballot.”

Another depicted an armed, masked man next to the American Front logo beneath a man’s body hanging by a noose from a telephone pole.

And then she showed a photo of a noose hanging from a rafter of a pole barn where the group’s members held meetings at the Faella home in Holopaw.

“That is the only reason anyone would choose to decorate their home,” she said. ” These are the images that go through Marcus Faella’s head as he is teaching.”

Faella’s defense accused the state with exaggerating and framing Faella’s beliefs and intent based on old images.

The American Front flyer was made 10 years ago and never released after Faella decided it was inappropriate, according to Ecker.

“You know what’s happened since 2004? Not a single thing — not a single criminal act,” Ecker told the jury. “They realized it was a bad idea and never showed (those pictures).”

Ecker based his closing argument partly on the testimony of the FBI paid informant, Jason Hall.

Hall, who received $40,000 for his work and to re-locate after his identity became known, testified he never saw acts of prejudice or received training to prepare for a race war.

However, he did say Faella told someone shooting at milk jugs to improve his aim by thinking of them as the heads of African-Americans using a racist slur.

“Don’t fall for that trap…that he’s a hate mongering racist and we want to stop him,” Ecker said referring to Hatch’s closing. “He has unpopular ideas and unpopular thoughts… and the government is trying to silence him.”

Ecker concluded, in part, by reminding the jury that the FBI and police didn’t find any documents on Faella’s home computers outlining any plans to commit violence.

In Hatch’s rebuttal, she replayed American Front videos of Faella talking about planning a May Day counter demonstration in Melbourne.

He told his followers he had dreamed of staging a riot in the city’s “Old Melbourne District” ever since his childhood from watching TV coverage of the National Front’s racial riots in England.

The arrests in May 2012 by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force drew international attention to Holopaw, a small community where American Front members were accused of conducting firearms training on a fortified plot of land owned by Faella.

A search of Faella’s land and buildings confiscated about 20 firearms, including AK-47s and a sniper rifle with a night-vision telescopic sight, records show.

Prior to Friday’s verdict, only three of the 13 other American Front members in the case have been convicted. Christopher Brooks was sentenced to three years in prison for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon; Luke Leger and Kent McLellan were both sentenced to four years of probation after pleading no contest to participating in paramilitary training.