Crime & Justice

Mom of Alleged Racist Cross-Burner Wants Judge to Let Her Stay in Home

IT WASN’T ME

With the alleged cross-burning couple deemed a nuisance and removed from the home, one of the suspects’ moms is asking a judge to let her return to the house.

Worden Butler and Alexis Hartnett in their booking photos following an arrest on misdemeanor harassment charges.
J. Reuben Long Detention Center

The mom of Worden Butler, the 29-year-old white man accused of burning a cross near the yard of his Black neighbors in South Carolina, has asked a Conway judge to let her return to her home now that Worden and his partner—Alexis Hartnett, who was also arrested—have moved out, according to court records obtained by WBTW. Janet Butler’s attorneys wrote in a filing April 5 that there’s now no reason to consider the home a “nuisance” three months after the couple was accused of burning a cross near the home of their Black neighbors, who are Army veterans, while shouting racial slurs. A county solicitor had asked a judge to declare the home a public nuisance—a request the judge quickly obliged, sealing the house off to the family and public. Butler and Hartnett were charged with second-degree harassment, a misdemeanor, and face no hate crime charges because South Carolina is one of two states that does not specifically criminalize hate crimes.

Read it at WBTW