Man arrested for threatening messages to lawyer, official gets no additional jail time

A former Philadelphia man who left threatening messages for his late father’s lawyer and a Lehigh County assistant solicitor will serve no additional time in jail, a federal judge decided Thursday.

Samuel Meeker spent stints in jail adding up to nearly 11 months since he was arrested in August 2019 and charged with interstate communication of threats. In addition to the jail time he already served, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Schmehl sentenced Meeker to three years of supervised release and ordered him to undergo mental health and substance abuse treatment.

Meeker, 38, is also ordered to have no contact with assistant county solicitor Sarah Murray, his father’s lawyer James Bartholomew or other lawyers and staff at the law firm Fitzpatrick Lentz & Bubba.

Meeker’s attorney A. Charles Peruto said he was elated by the sentence. The maximum Meeker could have received under federal sentencing guidelines is six years in prison, Peruto said. He was able to negotiate a time-served sentence because the victims did not want Meeker to go back to jail. Meeker will be released to a half-way house until he finds housing, Peruto said.

Court documents say Meeker left voicemail messages July 22, 2019, and Aug. 9, 2019, at the Lehigh County Government Center in which he allegedly threatened the county solicitor with force if she did not pay him a settlement in a purported lawsuit.

Meeker also left a threatening message for Bartholomew on Aug. 11, 2019, court records say.

When U.S. Marshals attempted to arrest him, Meeker barricaded himself in his Philadelphia apartment, prosecutors said in a motion seeking his detention pending trial.

A sentencing memorandum filed by prosecutors said Meeker has been jailed and under court supervision numerous times for drug offenses since 2010.

He was also convicted of defiant trespass in Northampton County court and ordered to have no contact with

Bartholomew as part of his sentence. That conviction stemmed from Meeker’s refusal to leave his ailing father’s property, where he lived in a barn. Bartholomew obtained an eviction order when Meeker’s erratic behavior frightened his father’s caregivers, the sentencing memorandum says.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kishan Nair.