Woman sentenced to 2 years for lockdown threat
By CURT ANDERSON - AP Legal Affairs Writer | AP – Thu, Jul 14, 2011FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A woman was sentenced Thursday to two years in federal prison for threatening gun violence last year against one of the nation's largest school systems, triggering a massive lockdown affecting more than a quarter-million students.
U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore imposed a harsher sentence than recommended under federal guidelines for 48-year-old Ellisa Martinez because of the scale of the disruption. Moore said Martinez's threatening email and phone call to conservative radio talk show host Joyce Kaufman was aimed at causing "maximum havoc" in Broward County schools — the nation's sixth-largest.
"It is certainly more serious than a threat communicated to a single individual," Moore said.
Martinez pleaded guilty in May to making the threats to Kaufman, after reading online that Kaufman was chosen as chief of staff to new Republican U.S. Rep. Allen West. Kaufman opted not to take the job to avoid political fallout for West, a tea party favorite and ardent gun rights supporter.
Kaufman became controversial last year for making politically-charged comments many people considered incendiary, including remarks at a tea party rally in July 2010 that "if ballots don't work, bullets will. You need to be prepared to fight tyranny."
The Nov. 10 email traced by investigators to Martinez's computer discussed some of Kaufman's statements about gun rights and said that "something big" was being planned at a Broward County government building or school.
"I'm going to walk in and teach all the government hacks working there what the 2nd Amendment is all about," the email said.Later that morning, a woman called Kaufman's radio station to say that her husband — a fictional person named "Bill Johnson" — was "going to shoot up a school in Pembroke Pines," a city in western Broward County. That call was traced to Martinez's cell phone.
The threats caused officials to order about 275,000 students locked down for several hours in 300 public, private and charter schools. Tens of thousands of dollars in overtime and other expenses were incurred by numerous police agencies and the FBI, said prosecutor Michael Walleisa.
Because Martinez has already been jailed for about eight months since the November 2010 incident, she will likely have a little more than a year remaining in prison. The maximum sentence for her crime is five years.
Her attorney, Samuel Randall, asked Moore to credit Martinez with time served and add six months of house arrest, but Walleisa insisted prison time was necessary.
"This activity on the part of Ms. Martinez was clearly planned and calculated," Walleisa said. "This is not a minor event."
Kauffman, who broadcasts from WFTL in Pompano Beach, attended Thursday's hearing and said afterward the judge did the right thing.
"It's a deliberate act. She needed to be punished," Kaufman said. "She had a vendetta against a Republican congressman."
In brief remarks, Martinez apologized for her actions and for causing "the drama of that day." Her attorney, Randall, said Martinez was attempting to make a mocking political point about the dangers of gun violence and never intended to cause such a major problem or harm anyone.
"She was trying to be sarcastic in sending this email. She was being impulsive," Randall said.
But Walleisa noted that she did several computer searches over two days to identify Kaufman, schools and cities in Broward County, and West's positions on issues.Martinez, from New Port Richey on Florida's Gulf Coast, fled Florida for California after she was contacted by the FBI. She was eventually arrested in the Los Angeles area.
Sooooo, a liberal wack-job threatens violence, shuts down a schoo district, and somehow it's all the gun's fault?
ReplyDeleteWTF, no I'm not fine with anyone making threats. What this woman did was stupid, and it was very very wrong.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if you had followed, oh, say the unprecedented wave of threats of violence from the right made to democratic legislators after the passage of the health care reform legislation, you would know that people behaving this way when they felt extremely strongly about an issue was not unusual. Most of those who threatened not only the lives of senators and congressman, but their staff, and their famillies, and their staff's families, and did actual physical damage to property as well, were not prosecuted AT ALL. These kinds of threats are made often, and nothing is done about them OFTEN.
I suspect in this case the sentence reflects the number of people affected and that they were children - and appropriately so.
The criteria followed in those cases often let people off the hook if they did not have the means to do harm, unlike say, the gun nut that went to the federal pen in Washington, Charlie Wilson. He made threats, lots of them, AND had the gun and apparently carried it to tea party protest events where he intended to use it.
This represents something of a double standard in that context of threats that are an expression of political speech. It was wrong. It is wrong in political speech. It is wrong any time.
All threats are wrong of such violnce. Don't lose sight of that point.
But that should ALSO, in fairness, include talk show host Joyce Kaufman who threatens that people will be SHOT if her political views do not prevail. THAT is also a threat of gun violence.
Do YOU defend that Kaufman statement? Are you aware that kind of insurrection is outlawed in our constitution?
But we do appear to have distinctly unfair and inconsistent patterns for prosecution and sentencing. I can only hope that this woman's going to jail is an object lesson for others NOT to do something similar.
My comment was to indicate that writing which does not threaten people with harm is a better way of expressing a strongly held opinion.
Is THAT clear enough for you?
Why are anti's so violent?
ReplyDeleteWe can now expect that this:
ReplyDelete"“And I don’t care how this gets painted by the mainstream media. I don’t care if this shows up on YouTube, because I am convinced that the most important thing the founding fathers did to ensure me my First Amendment rights was they gave me a Second Amendment. And if ballots don’t work, bullets will. I’ve never in my life thought that the day would come where I would tell individual citizens that you are responsible for being the militia that the founding fathers designed – they were very specific. You need to be prepared to fight tyranny: whether it comes from outside or it comes from inside.”
might get the FL prosecutor to look at Joyce Kaufmann. I know, Kaufmann didn't, like, explicitly threaten to kill school children. No, she, just sortakinda justified using guns to settle political "debates" with the liebrofascists. Oh, that's different, she's a reptilican--she gets a pass.
I'm not sure whether people like Kaufmann are really smart enough to know how close they are skating to the edge of the law or if they're just the sort of gutless cowards who infest GOD's Own Party.
I regret, but nothing can be made.
ReplyDelete"And if ballots don’t work, bullets will."
ReplyDeleteWhat a buncha silly assholes who keep repeating the most ridiculous nonsense because they think it sounds cool.
"What a buncha silly assholes who keep repeating the most ridiculous nonsense because they think it sounds cool."
ReplyDeleteI agree. Some libtard gets violent and immediately the article and the antis commenting start bringing up something silly and unrelated.
We saw this in January in Arizona. Some liberal nutjob goes whacko and immediately the media and the antis conjure up Sarah Palin from 3800 miles away.
Not liberals, fat white man, no matter how hard you try to deny their idiots on your side of politics.
ReplyDeleteSchizo Loughner who shot Gabby Giffords and others was into right wing extremist notions about all kinds of things, notably language and how it was reflected in government.
It was another right wing nut job, Joyce Kaufman, who was the catalyst for this empty threat. Unlike so many political nut jobs - say the one who terrorized the senator from Washington, or the latest, the one who is terrorizing Senator Boxer - this lady made an EMPTY threat; she didn't possess any weapons, not bomb materials, not firearms.
While this seems the exception to the rule, there seems to be far more calls to violence, like Sharron Angle, the wacko who ran in 2010 in Nevada for the Senate, who made similar suggestions for political violent action.
Nice try at revisionist history, but the facts are not on your side. Again.
So, of course, YOUR recourse is to try to ignore the facts in favor of ideology, one of the biggest problems on the right. You and yours are not reality based.
Doggone suggests I stick to the facts so I will.
ReplyDeleteMartinez, a left wing nut job, just got sentenced to prison for threatening violence.
Loughner, a left wing nutjob, is accused of shooting a Congresswoman and killing several others.
There, those are facts. No need to apply any revisionist theory or blame someone else.
Nothing else to see here. Move along.
You play fast and loose with the facts FWM.
ReplyDeleteThere is no legitimate basis to classify Loughner as what you call a 'left wing nut job'. Presumably you are relying on the very thin basis of some dimwit named Caitie Parker, who it has not been established really knew anything about Loughner, much less his politics at the time of the shootings. She claims to have known him back in 2007, but that has not so far as I know been verified that she had any actual closeness to him.
Whereas Loughner's own words, in his written statements and in his youtube videos, copy right wing nut job David Wynn Miller, a tax evader sovereign citizen government paranoiac, and others like him.
Loughner's OWN words, and the acknowledgment that he was inspired by visiting the right wing web sites. He lifts the ideas virtually word for word from the right wing.
You have a very sloppy notion of history FWM. Check out the links in the source below - Loughner, AND the right wing extremists. They're essentially identical.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/sovereign-citizens-jared-lee-loughner
dog gone:
ReplyDeleteFat White Man don't need no steenkeen facts, that's already fairly well established. If he says Jared Loughner was a "left winger"? well, dammit, don't worry your purty little head about it.
I mean it's really very simple. Folks like Joyce Kaufmann are just shining beacons of reichwing intellect and nobody don't listen to their stuff and go, "Oh, yeah, I'm gonna git me some-o-that sweet, sweet liebralfascist meat--with my 'only shoots one bullet every time you pull the trigger, until the 30 round magazine is empty so it's like a totally non-automatic weppin.--.
It's the truly dangerous ones like Martinez who need to be locked up for a few years.
Nice try at revisionist history, but the facts are not on your side. Again.
ReplyDeleteYou both seem to be doing fine with the pissing contest. While the right often has violent rhetoric, let me refresh your memory on some of the MANY violent acts perpetrated by the left.
Death threats to Palin:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/13/palintargeted-tweets-following-arizona-shooting-massacre/#ixzz1AxbfZyUz
Cornucopia of violent filth:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/01/the-face-of-hate.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and-_plots
Most of the assassination attempts on US Presidents have been on Republican Presidents by their opposition, while Kennedy was killed by someone from the extreme left.
Not to mention Bobby Kennedy who was killed for his support of Israel.
Not to even get into the extreme left eco-terrorists.
http://michellemalkin.com/2011/01/10/the-progressive-climate-of-hate-an-illustrated-primer-2000-2010/
Other items of note. Watt and Berkeley riots. Riots at the G8 summit. Hardly conservatives.”
Loughner was a registered 'independent' who the police have noted by looking through his journals that he had plans to kill Gabrielle Giffords a full year before Sarah Palin made the national scene. Yet somehow this is a result of Sarah Palin and the right's influence.
There were multiple films made about assassinating GWB and I believe there was a guide to killing him produced either as a book or a film.
See also Bill Ayers manifesto "Prairie Fire."
Google John Kerry and his remarks about Bush.
Google Weather Underground. They blew up buildings and killed people.
Riots with regards to the 1968 Dem convention in Chicago
Outside of the US
Likewise, Europe was plagued by the far-left Baader-Meinhof gang for a couple of decades. And the Baader-Meinhof gang were not just fringe lunatics widely despised.
No, they had the approval and support of a large minority of the German people.
I could list many many more from the left, but i'd rather not.
Please save your strength for a more plausible argument than that liberals are more violent than righties.
ReplyDeleteStick to more guns means less crime.
Loughner's own words and his internet fascination make it clear what his politics were, you can tap dance all you want, but those were his politics around the time he acted.
ReplyDeleteYour notion of history is ludicrous. Your defense of your position keeps having to change - so now, Loughner is an independent, NOT Liberal / Democrat? Would that be because there was no box to check for right wing lunatic on the votre registraton form?
How convenient you try to make war protests with police violence precipitating what happened describe anti-war political protests as lefty violence in 1968.
How is it that there have been no arrests and prosecutions in these cases of supposed threats to Palin.....hmmmm, seems to be maybe that they were like this one, peole making empty threats with no means of acting on them and no real intent to do so.......unlike the conviction of people like Charles Wilson in WA?
You have to stretch, twist, distort, and even out right lie WFM, to support your positions.
Please save your strength for a more plausible argument than that liberals are more violent than righties.
ReplyDeleteWell, they are. I'm not really trying to count. Only pointing out that one side doesn't have a monopoly on the use of violence.
Would that be because there was no box to check for right wing lunatic on the voter registration form?
Are you schizo? This was my 1st post on the topic. Loughner was a registered Independent. FACT.
You have to stretch, twist, distort, and even out right lie WFM, to support your positions.
Go through the links and the list. While i'm sure there is the occasional abortionist or right wing wacko, you lefties lack a lot of impulse control. You start a lot of riots and cause a lot of violence.
Baloney, FWM.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to ignore the unprecedented death threats to members of Congress from the right over health care reform, for starters.
Your assertions made claims about people who were not political at all. You went from claiming Loughner was a lefty to he was an independent which is not the same thing; when in fact his very own words on video and in documents show tha he had gone far right.
Had you argued that he was too crazy for it to matter, I might have found some common ground. Your assertions that the left is violent in the face of people like Kaufman and Sharron Angle calling for shooting if they don't get their political way - an extremist way -is ludicrous.
You are not making an honest argument.
And then we have the pseudo-reasoning of anonymous, which is even more stupid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and-_plots
Most of the assassination attempts on US Presidents have been on Republican Presidents by their opposition, while Kennedy was killed by someone from the extreme left.
Yeah, THAT doesn't occur in any credible history book. And the reasoning that the attempted assassinations were for political reasons by political people doesn't track with real history either - not does it make sense, given that the vice president who would succeed an asssainated president would be from the same party and have similar policies.