A Florida man who mailed pipes filled with explosives to prominent Democrats and critics of President Donald Trump was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Monday, Reuters informed.
Cesar Sayoc, 57, who pleaded guilty in March to using weapons of mass destruction and other crimes, began crying when U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan read the sentence.
Prosecutors had asked Rakoff to sentence Sayoc to life in prison, while Sayoc’s lawyers had sought a sentence of 10 years plus one month.
Ian Marcus Amelkin, one of Sayoc’s lawyers, argued that Sayoc’s crimes were caused by paranoid, delusional thinking brought on by heavy use of steroids.
He said Sayoc, who was living in a van at the time of his arrest last year, had struggled all his life with severe learning disabilities, the effects of childhood abuse and social isolation.
Sayoc, Amelkin said, saw Trump as a “father figure” and became obsessed with conspiracy theories about people he perceived as being enemies of the President.
“We believe that the President’s rhetoric contributed to Mr. Sayoc’s behavior,” he said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jane Kim, one of the prosecutors, argued that Sayoc was a danger to the public and that his crimes warranted severe punishment.
Sayoc expressed remorse shortly before the sentencing. “I am so very sorry for what I did,” he said.
Sayoc sent packages containing pipes stuffed with explosives, wires and alarm clocks to 16 intended targets, including former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, billionaire investor and Democratic donor George Soros, former Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan, actor Robert De Niro and CNN.
All of the devices were intercepted and none exploded. A report by federal investigators concluded they had no mechanism to trigger an explosion and “would not have functioned as designed.”
Be the first to comment