US man given 25-year prison term after setting fire to three Black churches

A white man has beeen sentenced on Monday to 25 years in prison by a federal court in Lafayette, Louisiana after he pleaded guilty to setting three historically Black churches on fire.

Federal district judge Robert Summerhays sentenced Holden Matthews to 25 years but gave him 18 months credit for the time he has already spent in jail.

Matthews, who will serve 282 months, had admitted to burning down three predominantly African American churches and pleaded guilty to both state and federal charges in February.

The judge also ordered him to pay about $2.7m in restitution to the churches he burned.

Matthews had burned three churches — St Mary Baptist Church, Greater Union Baptist Church and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church — over a 10-day span in 2019. The three churches, all in St Landry Parish, burned down between 26 March and 4 April.

Matthews was arrested and charged with three counts of simple arson on religious buildings and three hate crimes charges.

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Authorities said back then that Matthews had “a relationship with a type of music called black metal,” an extreme subgenre of heavy metal. Black metal has an association with church burnings in other parts of the world, they said.

The judge said on Monday that even though Matthews’ acts were not driven by race, they brought back fears to a “dark time in history“.

The judge was referencing the time when Black churches were burned by white supremacists during the civil rights movement.

After the fires, pastors and parishioners at the churches voiced concerns that black congregations were being targeted.

“It’s like the 60s again,” said Earnest Hines, a deacon at Mount Pleasant Baptist church.

According to his arrest warrant, Matthews used his debit card and ID to purchase a gas can, a 10-pack of automotive shop towels and a lighter on or around 25 March. Investigators found the remains of the same brand of gas can at the scene of the 4 April fire at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church.

The warrant also stated that a truck similar to Matthews’ gold Ford pickup was visible in video footage taken at two of the churches shortly before the fires.