Third Suspect Indicted for Allegedly Burning Cross in Front of Interracial Couple's Tennessee Home in 2012

A third suspect was indicted today for his alleged role in burning a cross outside the Minor Hill, Tenn., home of an interracial couple in 2012, the Justice Department announced.

Timothy Flanagan, 33, who authorities say recently moved from Giles County, Tenn., to Hudson, Fla., was expected to be arraigned before a federal magistrate in Tampa after his arrest by deputy U.S. marshals and FBI agents.

After initial court proceedings in Florida, Flanagan will be returned to the Middle District of Tennessee where a grand jury in Nashville indicted him on Thursday on three counts.

The indictment charges Flanagan with one count of conspiracy to violate housing rights, one count of criminal interference with the right to fair housing, and one count of using fire to commit a federal felony.

The indictment alleges that on April 30, 2012, Flanagan conspired with others to threaten, intimidate, and interfere with an interracial couple’s enjoyment of their housing rights in Minor Hill, Tenn.

While the indicted doesn’t name the other defendants, earlier court proceedings have disclosed that Timothy Stafford and Ivan John Rutherford London IV also were involved in the same crime.

Both Stafford, 41, and London, 21, have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate federal housing rights and are awaiting sentencing.

Court filings suggest both Stafford and London have cooperated with investigators in the hopes of getting lighter sentences if federal prosecutors agree to file “downward departure” recommendations before sentencing, now scheduled for August.  That cooperation may have included testifying before the grand jury, which meets secretly, before it decided probable cause exists to indict Flanagan.

The indictment alleges that Flanagan and others conspired to “threaten, intimidate, and interfere with an interracial couple’s enjoyment of their housing rights in Minor Hill,” the Justice Department said in a press release.

Flanagan and two other individuals “devised a plan to burn a cross in the yard of an interracial couple who had recently had a baby. The conspirators constructed a wooden cross, purchased diesel, fuel and then covered the cross in a diesel-fuel-soaked cloth.”

“The conspirators then drove the cross to the victims’ residence and placed the cross in the driveway and ignited it,” the press release said, adding:  “Flanagan and his co-conspirators allegedly chose to burn the cross at the victims’ house because of their race, as well as the race of their infant child.”