SCRANTON — This is an official press release from the U.S. Department of Justice (USAO - Pennsylvania, Middle), published as received.
SCRANTON - The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that the Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 48-month prison sentence yesterday for a former state prison inmate who mailed a letter threatening to kill a Monroe County Common Pleas judge.
According to United States Attorney Peter Smith, the Court’s decision affirmed the sentence imposed on Devon Williams, age 26, by Senior U.S. District Court Judge James M. Munley on March 24, 2015.
Williams pleaded guilty on December 17, 2014, to mailing a threatening communication. In his plea, Williams admitted that while he was an inmate at the State Correctional Institution in Albion, Pennsylvania, he mailed a letter from the prison in January 2014 to the judge’s chambers at the Monroe County Courthouse in Stroudsburg. The letter threatened harm and death to the judge.
Williams was indicted by a federal grand jury in September 2014, as a result of an investigation by the United States Postal Inspection Service and the Pennsylvania State Police.
In its opinion, the Court explained that Judge Munley’s sentence, which varied upward from the sentencing guidelines, was both procedurally and substantively reasonable, and that the defendant’s history of violence and the threatening and graphic nature of the letter justified a sentence above the suggested guidelines range.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Francis P. Sempa prosecuted the case and handled the appeal.
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