Originally published at: 5 years in jail for gay teacher who sent nasty voicemails to judge
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No doubt Judge Berger is a sack of effluent. But you don’t threaten the establishment with violence, or at least you can’t leave evidence behind.
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Oh, good! It’s a federal crime!
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No one is saying it’s a good idea to threaten a judge, but c’mon. Giving the maximum possible sentence to someone who has has already entered a guilty plea when the prosecution has asked for half that amount of time is freaking insane. There are at least two shithead judges involved in this story.
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Well that was stupid. I mean, if it’s true, I guess good on him for admitting it, but that was stupid.
I agree, although it sounds like the guy isn’t remorseful in the least bit, and judges hate that. I get the guy’s sentiment. I really do. But he didn’t help himself here. If he’d just said, “I was just trying to scare her so she knew how it felt. I would never have actually done anything. I overreacted, and I’m sorry,” he probably would have gotten the sentence prosecutors recommended. Which would still be too much, in my opinion, but it sounds like he basically said, “Yeah I meant it, and I’d do it again.” It still doesn’t justify the maximum sentence, but that wasn’t smart.
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The Monopoly on Violence does not tolerate freelancers.
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Isn’t that part of what was entailed in the guilty plea?
Did you read the linked apology letter he sent to the court? It didn’t read like “someone who is not remorseful in the least bit and would do it all again” to me. Sure, he probably could have expressed more contrition, but he also could have expressed a lot less.
To Whom It May Concern:
My name is Stephen Thorn, and I have been charged with threatening a federal judge in the Middle District of Florida. Firstly, I want to sincerely apologize for any emotional distress this caused this judge and/or her immediate family members or staff to experience. I am a retired public school teacher, who has no criminal record, and my intention was not to threaten her and/or her immediate family members.
I realize now that rather than react to one of her rulings rashly and angrily immediately after reading a newspaper article about her ruling, I should have waited a minimum of 72 hours to make my point with her in a polite and professional manner, instead of handling it the way I did.
I am not attempting to justify my overreaction to her ruling, but please understand it was not coming from a place of malice in my heart and/or mind. I don’t feel this is necessarily the time or the place to go into my reasons for leaving her the voicemail message I did, but suffice it to say I spent a large portion of my teaching career advocating for LGBTQ+ public school students, and volunteering for LGBTQ+ youth advocacy organizations in both Florida and in California. I am also the parent of two adult sons, one of whom is gay. Consequently, this factored into my overreaction, as well.
Again, I do want to genuinely apologize for causing this federal judge and/or her immediate family members or staff to experience any emotional distress. As a 65-year-old retired public school teacher, I definitely should have rethought the manner in which I left this voicemail.
Thank you,
Stephen Thorn
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Huh. That’s interesting. Then why does the post say
He admitted this was a true threat
That letter makes it clear that it absolutely was not a true threat, in the legal sense. He admitted it only in the sense that he pled guilty. And frankly…if he didn’t mean it, he shouldn’t have pled guilty. Who was his lawyer? Anywho, thanks for sharing that. I do think Rob should update his post, though, because he absolutely did not admit that the threat was a true threat.
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If he was a school teacher then the answer is probably “an overworked and underpaid public defender.”
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I agree up to a point. As long as we have legal means to remove them then yes, it’s not a good idea to use violence, threats of violence, vigilante action, or terror to achieve political aims. Down the road, maybe if the system is too corrupt to be fixed the nice way, then I’ll change my mind. I’m withholding my judgement of what future generations decide is the right course of action.
Typical behavior when you threaten the establishment. They will use their power to make an example out of someone that has challenged their authority. One has to tread very carefully to make change without crossing a legal line that can allow them to shut you down. Sadly it seems like this fellow let emotions run away in the moment and is paying an excessive price for that.
There’s a whole system filled with them. They all got each other’s backs. And they make it very difficult to take legal action against any one of them. Documentation of corrupt behavior and public exposure by journalists are some more effective weapons. Isolating a justice from their peers by marking them as an unsavory embarrassment can still be effective. (with the exception of true MAGA, who don’t care how bad they look)
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That’s still bad lawyering, in my opinion. Make the state prove your intent. With no prior record and no history of violent behavior, that’s a tall order. Then use that as leverage to plead guilty to a lesser charge that doesn’t carry a 5 year maximum sentence.
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Typical behavior when certain people threaten the establishment, maybe.
I haven’t heard any cases of January 6 insurrectionists getting sentences twice as long as what the prosecution asked for.
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He did, with his guilty plea.
Obviously, it wasn’t a true threat. But he plead guilty and apologized in hopes for lenience and then they nailed him anyway. What he did was understandable: it’s a case almost comically compatible with the outcome of “and that’s how the supreme court ended up vastly expanding the scope of true threats, to judges.”
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The prosecutor thinks what the guy said does constitute “true threat” (p.2-3), and at least messages 2 and 3 can certainly taken to look that way. It’s a bit hard to make out between all the insults, but I guess this is the gist of it:
Message 2: […] Let’s see how you would like it
if somebody endangered your children in school or your grandchildren in school. […] Again, maybe that’s not a bad idea, Tit for tat. […] maybe we need to make sure your children or grandchildren have to face the same flight.[…]”
Message 3: “[…] Maybe the same needs to happen to your kids. I’m not saying it will be me,
[…] but I would say you need to be very careful. […] Tit for tat,
just remember that— an eye for an eye—[…]”
In the other messages he backpedals from that a bit, and explicitly says he’s “not threatening” her. But that doesn’t mean the previous messages don’t count as a true threat.
I can understand his anger, and I don’t think he should go to jail for 5 years for that. And at the same time I can see he said a some of stupid things, and I have no idea what he thought would happen.
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That doesn’t mean he can prove it in court. Proving someone’s state of mind is difficult. This defendant had no criminal record and no history of violent behavior, and is saying that he never intended harm, that he was just trying to make the judge feel the way a lot of LGBTQ people feel. His history makes that claim entirely believable. Granted, juries are unpredictable and you never know what you’re going to get, but I would feel good about my chances, if I were the defense attorney. Remember, the prosecutor has to prove the intent “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Regardless, giving him the max sentence is ridiculous. The whole reason you take a plea deal is to avoid that possibility. He might as well have gone to trial, if the judge was just going to give him the max sentence anyway. This result is no different than if he’d gone to trial and been found guilty.
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He martyred himself (granted, 5 years isn’t burning at the stake but the premise still holds). Or he had terrible representation. I want to think he is trying to set a precedent for punishment when the MAGAs rise up against judges after Trump loses the election and cases in November, but we all know that our justice system is not equitable or just.
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True, however none of this makes it “obvious” this wasn’t a threat. Of course it was a dumb idea to plead guilty, because now the prosecution did not have to prove anything at all.
As far as I understand all that, he did not take a plea deal, he pleaded guilty.
But sentencing him to jail, and especially to double of what the prosecution requested is one big shitshow.
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Well that’s what happens when you take a plea deal. He pled guilty in return for the prosecution recommending a lighter sentence. The judge, however, doesn’t have to follow the sentencing recommendation, and he didn’t. I suppose it’s possible that he just went in and pled guilty without any deal, but that would have been phenomenally stupid, and I’m sure that didn’t happen. If you insist to your lawyer you want to plead guilty, your lawyer is going to say, “Ok, let me talk to the ADA and see what they can do for you.” They’re not going to just let you go into court and make that plea without talking to the prosecutor first. Not all plea deals are dramatic and take days of negotiations. Sometimes they happen in court literally minutes before you go in front of the judge.
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One of the Jan 6th convicts:
On August 26, 2022, Howard Richardson was sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release. He had struck a police officer three times with a flagpole, hard enough to break the flagpole. He had been arrested in November 2021 and had pleaded guilty in April 2022.[134]
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Not the same.
First, that case involved a violent assault.
Second, the judge in that case still ultimately sentenced the defendant to the amount of time the prosecution recommended (46 months), not twice as long as what prosecutors recommended as in this case.
This guy got treated much more harshly than the J6 insurrectionists.
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