USA TODAY International Edition
Man who mailed explosives gets 20 years
Despite devices’ defects, terror spree ‘horrendous’
NEW YORK – Cesar Sayoc, the Florida drifter who mailed 16 crudely improvised explosive packages to critics of President Donald Trump, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison Monday for a domestic terrorism spree that sparked a nationwide scare last year.
U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff said Sayoc, 57, mailed the pipe bombs “to strike fear and terror in the intended victims.” The bombs did not detonate.
“The nature and circumstances of the offenses are, by any measure, horrendous,” Rakoff said.
The packages targeted former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, actor-director Robert De Niro, cable TV network CNN and others.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan called for life imprisonment. They cited Sayoc’s history of arrests and characterized him in a sentencing memorandum as failing to fully accept responsibility and express remorse.
Sayoc said tearfully at Monday’s hearing that he regrets what he did.
“I am beyond so very sorry for what I did,” Sayoc told the judge. “I understand that I have committed a very serious crime. I take full responsibility.”
Of the victims in the case, Sayoc said, “I will be apologizing to them for the rest of my life.”
Rakoff, in choosing not to impose a life sentence, said it is likely that Sayoc was aware that the bombs he made were too crude to cause any damage and would not explode. That fact “was in the court’s view a conscious choice,” Rakoff said.
Federal defenders assigned to represent the virtually penniless defendant asked for a lenient, 10-year prison term that would give Sayoc hope that he would not die behind bars.
They said in a sentencing memo that the former bodybuilder and exotic dancer “found light” in Trump and became radicalized by right-wing rhetoric after a life of family upheavals, learning disabilities, sexual abuse by a priest and heavy steroid use pushed him “further and further into the margins of society.”
One of his federal defenders, Ian Amelkin, told the judge, “We believe that the president’s rhetoric contributed to Mr. Sayoc’s behavior.”
The nerve-jangling bomb threats erupted in October when suspicious packages began arriving in U.S. Postal Service facilities and at the offices or homes of Sayoc’s targets. Mailed from southern Florida, the packages held devices that looked like pipe bombs and contained fireworks powder, a swimming pool chemical and glass fragments. Clocks were included as apparent explosion timers.
The mailings prompted safety concerns for postal workers, first responders and Trump critics.
Law enforcement authorities intercepted the packages before any exploded, and no one was injured.
Authorities captured Sayoc in Plantation, Florida, on Oct. 26, 2018. They tracked him down through evidence from FBI laboratory tests that linked him to 11 of the 16 packages.
An FBI analysis concluded the devices “would not have functioned as a result of their design,” because the fusing systems “lacked the proper components and assembly” needed to trigger explosions.
A forensic expert hired by Sayoc’s attorneys similarly said, “None of the 16 mailed devices were functional; as fabricated, none could function as a destructive device.”
Federal prosecutors contended in their sentencing memorandum that under federal law, a device is classified as destructive if it is “capable of exploding and intended to be used as a weapon.”
Referring to the devices as he confessed, Sayoc said he “was aware of the risk they could explode” and cause injuries or property damage.
The FBI lab analysis report said testing could not determine whether the nonfunctional fusing systems were intentional or just bad construction.