Here’s my question: why hadn’t pipe-bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc served any prison time?
Sayoc now faces up to 58 years in prison for the pipe bomb (or pipe bomb hoaxes) recently sent to various political figures on the left.
But my question is: why was a guy with a rap sheet a mile long not only at large until yesterday, but with a history of never having served any time in prison?:
Sayoc has been arrested multiple times previously, according to the FDLE, including for a “threat to bomb” in 2002. Sayoc pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year of probation. Subsequent arrests were related to fraud, possession of a controlled substance, battery and grand theft in the third degree, and more. Based on FDLE records, Soyac appears not to have served any jail time in Florida, but was placed on probation in three separate instances.
I wrote about this yesterday as well, quoting an article that listed the following:
Sayoc has been arrested several times in Broward County, Florida, dating back to 1991, court records show. His most recent arrest in Broward was in 2014. In 2002, he was charged with making a bomb threat in Dade County, Florida. He was sentenced to one year of probation. Prosecutors agreed to withhold adjudication of the felony charge, meaning it was dismissed after he completed the probation in 2003.
In 1991, Sayoc was charged with third-degree grand theft, a felony. He pleaded guilty that same year and was sentenced to two years of probation. In 1994, his mother sought a domestic violence injunction against Sayoc, court records show.
Sayoc was arrested on drug charges in 2004. He was accused of possession and sale of steroids, along with possession of a controlled substance without a prescription, tampering with evidence, filing fraudulent tax returns, criminal use of personal ID info and possession or unlawful issue of a driver’s license. He pleaded guilty that same year and was sentenced to 18 months of probation.
In 2013, Sayoc was charged with battery and third-degree grand theft, a felony. He pleaded guilty in 2014 and was sentenced to probation. In 2009, Sayoc was charged with operating without a valid license, not having insurance and not having a tag light and was fined after pleading guilty to the misdemeanor charges. In 2014, Sayoc was arrested on a petit theft charge and violation of probation. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail.
He apparently never served even that 30-day sentence.
I’m neither a police officer nor a judge, and I don’t have enough information to say how usual or unusual this would be, but I certainly hope it’s unusual for someone that dangerous to be walking around, free as the proverbial bird.
Theories abound. One is that it has to do with lenient sentencing in the Florida court system involved. He also has been reported in various outlets as having a history of mental illness (apparently untreated) and/or diminished intellectual capacity, but I’m not at all sure that those reports are reliable. Certainly, if he intended his bombs to be functional, the way he actually built them was a testament to a certain amount of diminished intellectual capacity.
My question remains unanswered as yet, so far as I know.
Years ago (not all that many), he probably/reasonably would have been committed to a mental hospital. Not now though, even if it puts the public at risk.
Also, I have read that Florida does not permit felons to vote, even if they’ve completed their sentences. If true, he shouldn’t have been a registered Republican or anything else.
Kate
Also, I have read that Florida does not permit felons to vote, even if they’ve completed their sentences. If true, he shouldn’t have been a registered Republican or anything else.
Correct. One more example of lax law enforcement in Broward County. School shooter ring a bell for lax law enforcement in Broward County? But back to felons and the vote in Florida. Florida Felons Want Their Voting Rights Restored_A ballot amendment in the November election could restore voting rights to 1.5 million felons in Florida, one of just three states that permanently bars felons from voting.
The term “former felon” is not correct. A more accurate term would be “convicted felon who has completed his or her sentence, including prison, parole, or probation.” A slang term for that is off paper.
NYT: Can Felons Vote? It Depends.
A lawyer who represented him several times was interviewed in CNN. He said that Sayoc didn’t have the mental ability to pull off this kind of caper.
According to the news reports the guy was living in his van. The pictures of the van look like a shiny brand new van to me, not the sort of van one associates with a homeless person. Did anyone notice its make, year, and model? It would be interesting to figure out what it cost and if he was really the buyer.
If the US is so lenient in sentencing, how come it has one of the largest prison populations in the West? It’s not like Florida is short of felons.
Other than the first bomb threat, it’s all chump change — not having a correct licence, really? — and not a threat to other people.
If he had served his probation year for that original bomb threat, how would it have stopped him doing these ones? And if we are jailing people for long sentences for making bomb threats, then we should jail people for long terms for any violent threat (which at least would put most of Antifa in jail, so there is that).
You can have all violent and slightly deranged people in detention, but it requires a police state to do it. It’s a cure far worse than the disease.
There was the battery and grand theft. Those indicate a propensity for battery and theft. It ought to count for something in terms of incarceration. The difference between battery and possible murder is whether the other person…has a heart attack, falls and hits his head….
The Sutherland Springs shooter should have been in the NCIS no-gun list but the AF screwed up and his crime and mental illness didn’t get registered.
The bombs were an interesting item. You don’t put a timer on a mail bomb, for example.
A lawyer who represented him several times was interviewed in CNN. He said that Sayoc didn’t have the mental ability to pull off this kind of caper.
I’ve wondered about that, too. Maybe we will learn someday, right after we see the trial of the guy who ran his car into the crowd in Charlottesville. Funny how those things just fade away.
Guys who get off a lot are often police/gov’t informers. Just sayin’
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/10/our-under-incarceration-problem-explosive-packages-edition.php
A FELONY IS A FELONY.
Being a snitch should not in my view be a sufficient reason for serving no slammer time. How about serving the sentence under less onerous conditions, e.g. no cellmate, daily access to outdoors, protection from the other violent inmates, but serving the full sentence.
I have long thought the M’naughton Rule WRONG in the extreme: a guy shouldn’t do the time because he is a dolt helps social cohesion how?
Among other interesting data points, an answer to the felons-can’t-vote question.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/10/27/strange-contradictions-of-alleged-pipe-bomber-raise-additional-questions/
“Interestingly, in spite of the arrests and the rap sheet, Sayoc has never actually been convicted of a felony. That’s why he is eligible to be a registered voter. The Miami Herald had ground truth on that on Friday:
…
(He pleaded to the count, basically, and was awarded the “withhold of adjudication” pending probation and staying clean.)
The MSM have been almost universally depicting Sayoc as a felon. Which is somewhat understandable, given the numerous arrests, but nevertheless sloppy – and comes across as opportunistic.
…
Olson also discovered that Sayoc posted a video of his now-infamous white van on 28 August 2016 – completely free of Trump stickers. Olson finds it interesting that at the height of the 2016 campaign, MAGA-cap-wearing Sayoc didn’t have stickers on the van.
Olson’s account of the shifting evidence on Sayoc’s party registration (see Ben’s post) is worth checking out as well. LU contributor Jeff Dunetz has the Florida record showing that Sayoc registered as a Republican on 4 March 2016. But many Internet sleuths reported that Sayoc’s original MyLife entry listed him as a Democrat on Friday morning. The MyLife entry was then changed dozens of times within moments. Olson watched that pattern live, at the time, and gives approximate time hacks for his findings.”
Other odd things that don’t add up.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/10/27/lingering-questions-about-the-pipe-bomber-that-the-msm-arent-asking/
“A short time ago, NBC News published an article with the headline “Pipe bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc is a registered Republican and a Trump fan with a criminal record.”
The descriptions are not entirely false, but they are misleading. Worse yet, they betray NBC’s willingness as a news agency merely to scratch the surface and leave it at that.
If the network’s investigators had bothered to look a little deeper into Sayoc’s political affiliations, they might have found his now-scrubbed bio on MyLife, a social reputation scoring site (h/t Dean Garrison, DC Dirty Laundry), which identifies him as a Democrat.
…
An examination of his Twitter page, also since deleted, would have revealed some unusual preferences for a “Trump fan.” Note from the compilation below that he followed Barack Obama, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver, Ellen DeGeneres, Lena Dunham, and CNN Breaking News.
[includes screen shots]
It’s also worth highlighting one of the more prominent Twitter users he didn’t follow: Donald Trump. In fact, he didn’t follow a single conservative on social media. Shouldn’t NBC News be even mildly curious about this seeming contradiction?
…
What’s more, the stickers are a direct violation of Florida driving laws:
How did Sayoc manage to tool around in this vehicle without getting pulled over? And why isn’t NBC News interested in knowing?”
Alan Dershowitz.
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/413410-avoid-temptation-to-seek-partisan-advantage-from-pipe-bomb-arrest
“The arrest of Cesar Sayoc Jr. for the flurry of pipe bombs directed against liberal and left wing icons leaves many questions unanswered. It does seem to put to rest the conspiracy theory of a “false flag” operation organized by the hard left to demonize the hard right or the Trump administration. But we still do not know whether the pipe bombs were intended to kill or merely to frighten. The FBI has determined that these bombs were not hoax devices, but they have not disclosed whether they were capable of lethally exploding. Either way the perpetrator must be condemned in the strongest of terms and tried for serious crimes.
The entire episode brings back painful memories of the Weathermen and other radical left wing organizations that planted bombs in the 1970s. The Weathermen and other radical leftist groups targeted universities, army bases, police officers, banks, and other establishment places and people. The death toll was considerable, and the fear was palpable. At about the same time, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and other radical leftist groups terrorized the United States.
So far no one has tried to glorify the arrested person responsible for the recent pipe bombs. Although President Trump has condemned the alleged perpetrator, it would not be surprising if some right wing extremists took perverse pleasure and pride in the attacks on the left wing icons. This is different from how some liberals glorified the Weathermen, Black Panthers, and other hard left terrorists. Left wing lawyers, who would never defend an accused right wing terrorist, rushed to represent these radical groups, while prominent liberals contributed to defense funds and attended fundraising parties. Films, books, plays, and articles sought to understand the motives of these young murderers.
…
The extreme right and the extreme left both have a penchant for lawlessness that fuels violence and terrorism. It is ahistorical to identify such terrorism only with either the hard right or the hard left, though partisans always seem to do that when it serves their own ideological interests. The hard right and the hard left share a distrust of dialogue, an intolerance toward those with whom they disagree, and a willingness to use despicable means to achieve what they believe are desirable ends.
All Americans should condemn terrorism, regardless of its source, but conservatives have a special obligation to condemn right wing terrorism, just as liberals have a special obligation to condemn left wing terrorism. No one should be given a pass. It is not that conservatives are responsible for right wing terrorism or that liberals are responsible for left wing terrorism. The point is that right wing terrorists often falsely claim to be acting on behalf of the conservative agenda. Similarly, left wing terrorists sometimes falsely claim to be acting on behalf of the liberal agenda. It is too easy for conservatives and liberals to condemn the other side.
Both sides have to disassociate themselves from violence on their side of the political spectrum. In the days to come, we will learn more about the alleged perpetrator and his motives. For now, it is enough to applaud law enforcement for the arrest, and for all decent Americans to avoid the temptation to seek partisan advantage from this frightening episode.”
Some of the “charges” originally stated appear to be those found on original arrest reports and supporting documents. They are not the same as “charges” actually filed by prosecutors after reviewing all the available evidence and deciding they can win in court. Enhancing (stacking) charges at arrest usually is done to enhance the amount of bail, thus keeping the violator in custody longer.
Some states require that a person actually serve time, as a result of sentence, before a conviction can be a true felony, or be used as a sentence enhancer in a subsequent brush with the law. I don’t know Florida law, my experience was much farther west… Somehow, the idea of battery + theft seems to add up to strong-arm robbery in my experience. These “probation only” resolutions are often done for the express purpose of getting an unsolvable problem out of the system; they leave out the “for now” part.
He may not be a true “felon” under strict reading of the law in Florida.
But my question is: why was a guy with a rap sheet a mile long not only at large until yesterday, but with a history of never having served any time in prison?:
Simply because he is not Muslim.
Because our judiciary sucks hump. Not any more complicated than that.
The photos of the “bombs” show timing devices.
Timers, clocks … think about it. You send a package through the mail. You don’t know which *day* it will arrive, let alone hour/minute/second.
It’s either madness or a wacko sense of humor.
It’s not a serious explosive device, c’mon.
Bottom line on who is stoking the hate: it’s not the American people as a whole.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/10/28/its-not-the-average-american-people-who-have-failed-to-be-united-against-hate/
“The people are remarkably united against hate. The institutions – government, academia, the media – aren’t united against hate at all. The institutions treat the same hatreds differently depending on where they are coming from, and who is expressing them. Indeed, hatred against certain groups is in some cases lauded as the proper response to things we don’t like. The message is that hate is just awful — except when it isn’t, and someone else, not you, is appointed to say when that is.
…
Out of an American nation of 325 million, almost no one has ever wanted to shoot up a synagogue and kill 11 people, and until today, no one has ever done so. That reality has not changed for 242 years.
Americans are already unified in our desire to not do such things, and not see them done. Yet the institutions, which cover up for some anti-Semites [e.g., Farrakhan] while falsely tarring the blameless with the brush of what other anti-Semites do, have the temerity to hector and rebuke Americans on this topic.
Let our institutions be reformed, and let a cold wind and blistering sunlight scour and illuminate their every dark corner, until all their entrenched fraudulence and partiality have been sent packing, and they catch up with the ordinary people on this matter of unity against hate.”
Correction on the “new way to cancel stamps by slicing perfs” by the guy I got it from – former postmaster says “no such thing”:
https://disqus.com/home/discussion/pj-media/don39t_let_the_media_and_democrats_get_away_with_it/#comment-4165884768
In re Florida laws on obstruction of windshields such as on the alleged bomber’s van. I don’t think transparent signs are very cheap, but I have never bought any.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2018/10/27/flying-by-instruments/#comment-564342
This site states FL law as:
“No person shall drive any motor vehicle with any sign, poster, or other nontransparent material upon the front windshield, side wings, or side or rear windows of such vehicle which materially obstructs, obscures, or impairs the driver’s clear view of the highway or any intersecting highway.”