SKOKIE SENDS A NSM BONEHEAD TO PRISON

Y’all remember Sklokie, IL right? That’s the Chicago suburb that a Nazi crew wanted to march in back in the 70s in a case that became one of the major challenges for how to ensure free speech and the First Amendment. The end resut: Nazis have the right to speak and march regardless of the fact that they want to promote the ideals of hate and division. On Friday, Skokie got a little payback: the other side of that result. If you act on those ideals of hate and division, that’s your ass. Actually,  Mariusz Wdziekonski was a early Christmas gift for anyone fighting those particular ideals. He was a Polish immigrant, which more than likely has a lot of folks in the anti-immigrant crowd in tears since they have to acknowledge that yes, immigrants breaking the law come in white too. He was also a member of the National Socialist Movement (NSM) which makes him the latest member of that group to get locked up on some crap like this, vandalizing Jewish tombstones. Now when we first saw the story, it read that he had the book thrown at him – seven years for the crime. This is true, and we were laughing like hell over this. But in truth the deal is he will only serve a few months in jail before he gets deported. He had been spending the past three years or so locked away in lieu on bond, so he gets time served. And since he has only been in this country since 2004 – and spent half that time since in prison – what good is he? So it’s all good as far as everyone is concerned. Everyone except Mariusz Wdziekonksi, of course.

Huffington Post

Cook County Judge Larry Axelrood put his disdain for the defendant before him in no uncertain terms in his Skokie, Illinois courtroom on Friday.

“You’re a person who’s bigoted and espouses hate,” he said to 24-year-old Mariusz Wdziekonski, as he gave the Polish immigrant the maximum sentence for two charges of felony vandalism.

Wdziekonski was convicted two weeks ago of defiling 57 graves at a Jewish cemetery in the Chicago suburbs. He was a member of the National Socialist Movement, America’s largest neo-Nazi hate group, and confessed to spray-painting swastikas and phrases like “Aryan Power” on the headstones in order to gain stature in that organization.

After today’s sentencing hearing, Assistant State’s Attorney Lauren Brown told the Chicago Sun-Times that the maximum seven-year term imposed on Wdziekonski was “exactly what he deserved.”

He may be out of jail by next summer, though.

Wdziekonski was arrested in January 2008, so he’s been in custody almost three years already. Illinois law mandates that he serve only half his prison term, meaning he would be released in mid-2011.

But having immigrated in 2004, the conviction could lead to Wdziekonski’s deportation upon his release.