The Alabama veteran who hired an undercover cop posing as a Ku Klux Klan hitman to murder his Black neighbor will spend the next six years in prison.
Last week Allen Wayne Morgan agreed to plead guilty for using interstate facilities and travel with the intent of committing a murder for hire.
Sentencing was previously delayed for two months while U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre reviewed additional evidence in the case, regarding Morgan’s mental health status. That additional evidence was taken into consideration when Bowdre handed down the sentence in what the judge called a “horrible soap opera.”
Prosecutors played audio tapes of the conversation between Morgan and an undercover cop posing as a KKK hitman, in which Morgan asked the cop to murder his neighbor, during the sentencing. He wanted the man “hung from a tree like a deer and gutted,” after he suspected the neighbor had raped his wife. Authorities say Morgan offered a watch, a necklace, and a gun as a form of payment for the murder last August.
The judge cited evidence of Morgan’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), brought on after serving 175 combat missions in Iraq, as a cause to reduce his sentence. The judge also sentenced him to three years of supervised probation when his prison term is complete.
“Mr. Morgan detailed his calculated desire to end his neighbor’s life through the most brutal and heinous means. Today’s sentence reinforces that vigilantism is not acceptable in our society and we will prosecute that crime,” U.S. District Attorney Joyce White Vance said according to CBS affiliate WIAT.