Posted on 03/09/2011 10:28:49 AM PST by Coleus
Hal Turner, the North Bergen Internet radio host and blogger serving a 33-month sentence for threatening three U.S. judges, agreed to let the government destroy his firearms after the judge in his case ordered them returned to his mother. Federal prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Donald E. Walter in Brooklyn on Feb. 28 that they wanted to destroy the four weapons and pay Turner for them rather than return them. They said e-mails he wrote appeared to show he planned to pursue judicial and law-enforcement officials after he is released from prison.
"Mr. Turner has directed me to agree to the destruction of these weapons in a further attempt to establish that he has no intention of using them in any unlawful or harmful manner," Turner's lawyer, Ronald G. Russo of Schlam Stone & Dolan in New York, wrote in a court filing Monday. Turner, 48, was convicted in August of threatening the three Chicago-based U.S. appeals judges because of their ruling upholding a gun ban. Two previous trials ended in hung juries. Walter ordered the guns returned when he sentenced Turner on Dec. 21.
Turner has appealed his conviction.
Kim Nerheim, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in Chicago, declined to comment. Lawyers from Fitzgerald's office prosecuted the case in Brooklyn, where it was moved to ensure a fair trial. Walter is a senior judge in federal court in Shreveport, La. Russo said in the filing that Turner isn't violent, and he said in the e-mails that he would only shame certain people.
"Mr. Turner makes clear that at some later date, he hopes to embarrass those who have punished him by speaking of them on the radio," Russo wrote. Turner would be paid fair-market value for the firearms under the government's proposal.
The firearms are a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun and three semiautomatic handguns: a Sig Sauer Model P-229.40, a Star Firestar 9mm and a Walther PPK .380, according to the government's court filing. Prosecutors said Turner threatened Judges Frank Easterbrook, Richard Posner and William Bauer because of their June 2009 ruling upholding handgun bans in Chicago and Oak Park, Ill. A lower court previously dismissed a legal challenge to the ordinances by the National Rifle Association. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the handgun bans on June 28.
"Let me be the first to say this plainly: These judges deserve to be killed," Turner wrote in a Web posting. He also posted the judges' names, photographs and work addresses, and a map of their courthouse.
A waste of some good hardware. Why not sell them and give the money to the rescue mission?
Great question.
They may be trying to establish that guns, other than in the hands of the government, are on a par with rabid animals.
That was his mistake. Henry Bowman took care of business in a more, uh, deniable manner.
Two words:
Institutional. Hoplophobia.
It's New Jersey.
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