Inmate Pleads Guilty to Threatening Federal Judge in East Texas

Department of Justice ^ | May 15, 2009 | United States Attorney's Office Eastern District of Texas

[Larry381]

MARSHALL, TX—U.S. Attorney John M. Bales announced today that a 34-year-old Texas prisoner has pleaded guilty to threatening a federal judge in the Eastern District of Texas.

PATRICK NEIL WOMACK pleaded guilty on May 14, 2009, to mailing a threatening communication. The plea hearing was held before U.S. Magistrate Judge Chad Everingham.

According to information presented in court, on June 21, 2007, Womack, originally from Liberty, TX, was an inmate serving time in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Clement Unit in Amarillo when he mailed a threatening letter to U.S. District Judge David J. Folsom in Texarkana, TX. In the letter, Womack stated that he was about to escape from the Texas state prison system and threatened to kill Judge Folsom. Womack was indicted by a federal grand jury on July 1, 2008, and charged with sending the threatening letter.

Womack faces up to 10 years in federal prison. A sentencing date has not been set.

This case is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Denise O. Simpson.

[Larry381]

Inmate seems to have reached the almost unatainable score of 10 on the stupidity meter.

[muawiyah]

Still, you gotta' wonder about the quality of the people we're putting on the bench. Wasn't too far back your typical federal judge would have taken such a threat in stride, and if he showed any emotion about it at all, he might have oiled and cleaned the hogleg he kept under the bench.

Today, a judge gets a letter addressed to him from a prisoner who's locked up in a stout cell, and the prisoner says "Hey judge, I'm gonna' escape and then I'm gonna' kill ya'", all of which is so much BS nonsense.

Here the judge seems to have complained to the US attorney about the matter and now the poor guy is going to get sentenced for 10 more years.

FOR WHAT?

He couldn't have gotten out of the jail, and if he did, he was not likely to find the judge, and any good judge would have gotten the drop on the prisoner anyway.

This sort of nonsense takes perfectly good federal court time and wastes it. People end up waiting years and years for their cases to be heard and damages recovered. This judge has an inside track with DOJ and his petty, nearly imaginary grievance gets top billing!

We need judges with guts. Narcissistic little twits like this are giving all the judges a bad name.

[Doe Eyes]

Here the judge seems to have complained to the US attorney about the matter and now the poor guy is going to get sentenced for 10 more years. FOR WHAT?

Its called making a terroristic threat, and they charge non-inmate Texans with it all time.

[muawiyah]

But why bother with the guys they've already got locked up?

That's only gonna' make this guy maddern' a wet hen or something, and who knows what he'll do if he ever gets out of there.

[muawiyah]

Hey, let me put this in perspective. For years and years and years I worked in a job where we regularly received communications from federal prisoners.

They usually involved complaints about the mail, or the postage rates, or whatever.

The prisoners regularly suggest they'll bust out of jail and kill somebody ~ that's something they do. On the other hand, if they tell you that and send you a photograph of them standing there nekkid, or taking a dump on the can in their cell, you just know they don't really mean it.

BTW, we NEVER had anybody sent up for that sort of thing. Anyway, I'd ask that young female prosecutor's assistant what she did with the prisoner's photo? Did she perhaps secret it on her person or something?