Florida man sentenced to 14 months for sending death threat to Chief Justice John Roberts
A judge has sentenced a Florida man to 14 months in federal prison for sending a death threat to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts a month after he pleaded guilty.
Neal Brij Sidhwaney, a 43-year-old resident of Fernandina Beach, was sentenced to 14 months by U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard, according to a Tuesday update from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida.
According to court documents, Sidhwaney placed a phone call on July 31, 2023, from Florida to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., leaving "an expletive-laden, threatening voicemail message."
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"On the voicemail message Sidhwaney identified himself by name and repeatedly threatened to kill a specific United States Supreme Court Justice," stated the Attorney's Office.
"This case was investigated by the Supreme Court of the United States Police–Protective Intelligence Unit with assistance from the United States Capitol Police-Threat Assessment Section. It was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kirwinn Mike and Special Assistant United States Attorney Joe Wheeler, III."
Last December, Sidhwaney pled guilty to the charge of transmitting an interstate threat to kill and faced the possibility of as much as five years in prison for his actions.
Although the U.S. Attorney's Office did not name the justice he threatened, a competency assessment of Sidhwaney filed in court by psychologist Alan J. Harris stated that the defendant threatened Roberts.
"The identified official is Chief Justice John Roberts, whom he allegedly contacted by phone call and threatened to kill," the competency assessment stated.
Harris found Sidhwaney competent to stand trial but noted that the defendant suffered from "delusional disorder with psychosis."
The Supreme Court has seen an apparent uptick in threats against its members in recent times, especially against justices who lean conservative, following the court's 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade, which paved the way for several states to ban abortion in nearly all circumstances.
In 2022, in response to the leak of a draft opinion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned Roe, a man was arrested for plotting to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his home in Maryland.
In October 2022, Justice Samuel Alito said at a Heritage Foundation event that the draft opinion leak made Supreme Court justices "targets for assassination."
"The leak also made those of us who were thought to be in the majority in support of overruling Roe and [Planned Parenthood v. Casey] targets for assassination because it gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us," Alito said at the time.
He added that everyone, from the justices to their staff members, "want things to get back to normal the way they were before all this last term."
In March 2023, the Supreme Court filed a request with Congress to allocate an additional $12.4 million for Fiscal Year 2024 to improve security.
