Man Accused of Burning Louisiana Churches Is Charged With Hate Crimes

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Man Accused of Burning Louisiana Churches Is Charged With Hate Crimes

NYT

A Louisiana man accused of setting fire to three churches this past spring has been charged in an indictment with federal hate crimes, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

In an indictment that was returned this month but first unsealed on Wednesday, the Justice Department accused the man, Holden Matthews, of intentional damage to religious property — which the government classifies as a hate crime — and using fire to commit a felony.

Mr. Matthews, who was arrested in April, had already been charged with hate crimes by a local prosecutor, and the federal indictment came as little surprise. But federal prosecutors used the six-count indictment to suggest their theory of a motive for the fires: “the religious character” of the properties where they were set. They did not elaborate.

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Although federal prosecutors accused Mr. Matthews only of having a religion-linked motive for the fires, the Rev. Gerald Toussaint, the pastor of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas, said he believed race had played at least some role.

Still, Mr. Toussaint said he was generally satisfied by the indictment unveiled on Wednesday, and was not entirely surprised that an anti-Christian motivation had apparently been at play.

According to F.B.I. statistics, about 4 percent of hate crime incidents in 2017, the most recent year for which data was available, were at houses of worship, including churches, synagogues and mosques.

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