Background
Stephen Thorn left a series of five threatening voicemails for a federal district judge after reading an online article criticizing one of her judicial opinions. He used caller ID masking to hide his identity. The voicemails threatened the judge, her husband, and her children, stating it would be easy to track them down. Thorn pleaded guilty to making an interstate threat to injure a federal judge. The district court imposed a sixty-month sentence, which was a thirty-month upward variance from the guideline range of twenty-four to thirty months.
The court’s reasoning
The Eleventh Circuit reviewed the sentence for substantive reasonableness under an abuse of discretion standard. The court found that the district court did not abuse its discretion by imposing an upward variance. The district court properly weighed the seriousness of the offense, the need for deterrence, and the premeditated nature of the threats. The court noted that the guidelines did not fully account for the specific terroristic nature of the conduct. The court also found that the district court adequately considered Thorn’s age and health by adopting the presentence investigation report and acknowledging his difficult life. The court declined to consider an argument about disparate sentences because it was raised for the first time in a reply brief.
What it means going forward
The decision reinforces the discretion of district courts to impose upward variances in cases involving threats against federal judges, even when the guidelines already include enhancements for the number of threats or the status of the victim.