CHICAGO, April 12 (UPI) -- Defense attorneys for white supremacist Matt Hale Monday accused an undercover FBI informant of initiating a plot to kill a Chicago federal judge.
Hale, 32, is charged with five counts of solicitation for murder and three counts of obstruction of justice in an alleged murder-for-hire plot to kill U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow.
Hale reportedly was angered after an appeals court ruled in 2002 that his East Peoria, Ill.-based group could no longer use the name World Church of the Creator, because it was trademarked by an Oregon group.
The self-avowed white supremacist is accused of soliciting the government informant and another church member to kill Lefkow.
In opening statements, the defense said the informant proposed killing the judge, WLS-TV, Chicago, said. Former Hale follower Benjamin Smith killed two people and wounded nine in a racially-motivated, two-state shooting spree over the Fourth of July weekend in 1999.
Smith killed himself during a brief police chase in Southern Illinois.
