Nova Scotia man to serve two months in jail for burning cross last year
Posted January 10, 2011 2:51 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
KENTVILLE, N.S. – One of two Nova Scotia brothers convicted of a hate crime for burning a cross in front of the home of an interracial couple is facing two months in jail after receiving a six-month sentence Monday.
Twenty-one-year-old Nathan Rehberg of Avondale, N.S., was convicted in November of inciting racial hatred and criminal harassment.
Rehberg apologized in court Monday, saying he will “never forgive himself.”
He was charged after Shayne Howe and his wife Michelle Lyon awoke last February to see a cross burning in front of their home in Poplar Grove, N.S. The cross had a noose around it.
Howe said he accepted Rehberg’s apology.
“I’ve been waiting for that for a long time,” Howe said.
In Supreme Court, Judge John Murphy sentenced Rehberg to six months, but gave him four months credit for time served.
The Crown asked for a two-year jail sentence, while the defence argued for a conditional sentence.
During his sentencing arguments earlier in the day, Crown lawyer Darrell Carmichael said the event was “akin to painting a swastika on a synagogue.”
“A sentence to a federal penitentiary is required to express society’s absolute denunciation of this act … and is necessary to deter others,” he said.
Defence lawyer Luke Craggs said his client agreed he had done a “very stupid” thing that had harmed the family he targeted. But Craggs said there’s no evidence to indicate Rehberg espoused any racist philosophy.
“I don’t think Mr. Rehberg fully grasped what he was doing when he put together the cross,” Craggs said.
Rehberg’s 20-year-old brother, Justin, will be sentenced Tuesday for the same offences.
Howe is black and Lyon is white.
