Six men plead guilty to cross-burning in northwest Georgia

<p>A federal judge sentenced six men to prison terms ranging from six months to 46 months Friday for burning a cross in the yard of a woman whose daughter was romantically involved with a black man.</p><p>Jerrell Timothy Garner, Stacy Paul Jones, Steven Garland Jones, Jeremy Ray Sims, Eric Shane Sullivan and Billy Richards Wells _ all of Trenton _ pleaded guilty Feb. 23 to conspiracy to deprive civil rights.</p><p>Sims and the Jones brothers made the cross and placed it at the foot of Eva Hurst's driveway in Sand Mountain on Nov. 5. They lit the cross and left, then worried that the flames might spread to a nearby tinder-dry forest, so Sullivan called 911.</p><p>According to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Atlanta, U.S. District Judge Harold L. Murphy of Rome also ordered Garner and Sullivan to pay $1,000 fines. Sullivan, 25, was sentenced to six months in federal prison and six months home detention, and Garner, 29, was sentenced to a year in prison.</p><p>Stacy Jones, 30, was sentenced to two years and 10 months in prison; Steven Jones, 41, to three years and six months; Sims, 28, three years and 10 months; and Wells, 31, two years.</p>