White-supremacist group member's sentence reduced

A federal judge has cut nine months off the prison sentence of a white-separatist group member convicted in a conspiracy to scare minorities off the streets of Salt Lake City.

U.S. District Judge Dee Benson this week ordered Eric G. Egbert's 42-month sentence reduced to 33 months.

The reduction was not opposed by prosecutors and was meant to correct a disparity between Egbert's sentence and those of his co-defendants, Shaun A. Walker and Travis D. Massey.

All three were convicted in April 2007 of conspiracy to interfere with civil rights and interference with a federally protected activity in connection with attacks on two minority men in 2002 and 2003.

A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled in April that Walker and Massey were to be re-sentenced because of insufficient evidence supporting a factor weighed in their sentencing.

Walker, of Hillsboro, W.Va., is a former chairman of the white-separatist group National Alliance who once lived in Utah. In July, Benson dropped his sentence from 87 months to 37 months.

Massey is a former alliance spokesman in Utah. Benson reduced his sentence from 57 months to 30 months.

After that, Egbert filed a motion to reduce his sentence.

— Associated Press