On Monday, a man incarcerated in federal prison for making death threats against former presidents was given an extra four-year sentence after he acknowledged that he had sent more death threats against high-ranking officials.
Federal prosecutors stated that in June, Stephen Boykin attempted to mail letters to First Lady Michelle Obama, former President Barack Obama, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The letters were discovered by prison personnel. Prosecutors claim that Boykin acknowledged that he intended to follow through on his threats after being released from jail.
Threats against juries, government officials, and minority groups have increased in recent months, and Monday’s punishment follows this trend. The most recent threat against election workers was a worrisome increase, as Attorney General Merrick Garland warned on Monday.
Boykin attempted to send menacing letters from jail
According to a document submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia, prison officials discovered many threats in letters that 52-year-old Boykin attempted to mail in June.
According to court filings, Boykin stated that he intended to travel to Washington, D.C. to “take matters into my own hands” and “finish what I started.”
According to the affidavit, he declared that he would “get rid of” his opponents in order to guarantee President Joe Biden wins the next election, naming DeSantis and Harris as “candidates” he would pursue.
In other letters, Boykin’s last prosecutor in South Carolina was allegedly an Assistant U.S. Attorney.
Boykin wrote to a “Maxwell Caution,” a prosecutor he identifies himself, saying, “I am writing to let you know I will be home soon to finally get mine and the other revenge.” “I [guess] you can call yourself the walking dead cause that basically what you are.”
According to court documents, Boykin was sentenced to ten years in jail in March 2009 for sending murder threats against Obama, former Vice President Dick Cheney, and former President George W. Bush to the White House.
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Increased use of aggressive threats against public authorities
In recent years, there has been an increase in threats of all kinds made against government officials, jurors, and members of minority religious and ethnic groups around the country.
A Florida man was given a 14-month prison sentence last month after he acknowledged contacting the US Supreme Court and making threats to assassinate Chief Justice John Roberts. According to the Marshals Service, there were 457 severe threats against federal judges in fiscal year 2023 compared to 224 in fiscal year 2021.
The self-described leader of a white supremacist organization acknowledged in a guilty plea entered in September that he had intimidated witnesses and jurors in the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue murder trial—the bloodiest antisemitic assault in American history.
Last year, a Texas lady was detained and charged with a crime after making threats to murder the Black judge supervising federal charges brought against the former president of the United States, Donald Trump, alleging that he attempted to rig the 2020 election.
