Steven Joshua Dinkle (Mugshot photo) and burning cross (Stock photo)
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama judge has ordered a former Ku Klux Klan leader sent back to prison after violating terms of his probation for burning a cross in a Black neighborhood in 2009.
U.S. District Judge W. Keith Watkins on Wednesday ordered Steven Joshua Dinkle back to prison for 10 months.
In 2014 Dinkle pleaded guilty to burning a roughly 6-foot-tall cross at the entrance of a Black neighborhood in Ozark. He was sentenced to two years in prison, but was freed in May and placed on three years of supervised release.
Federal probation officers said Dinkle failed to show up for a mental health evaluation and fled the city.
Investigators have said Dinkle at one time was the exalted Cyclops of the Ozark chapter of the KKK.