Man who threatened to kill Rep. Omar gets light sentence after she called for leniency
A man who threatened to “put a bullet” in Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) has been sentenced to a year behind bars — a considerably lighter sentence than the maximum 10 years that he was facing. Omar had earlier appealed to the judge in the case to show leniency and compassion to her aggressor.
“We will not defeat” hate and threats of political violence “with anger and exclusion,” Omar wrote in a November letter to U.S. District Judge Frank Geraci Jr. “We will defeat it with compassion.”
On Friday, Geraci sentenced Patrick Carlineo Jr., 56, to a prison sentence of 12 months and 1 day, as well as three years of supervised release, for his threats against the congresswoman, CNHI News Service reported.
Sharing my full letter on the the sentencing of Patrick W. Carlineo, a man convicted of threatening my life.
We must apply a system of compassion to criminal justice.
Who are we as a nation if we respond to threats of political retribution with retribution ourselves? https://t.co/O6ooPx5aL6pic.twitter.com/RUik17VfnZ— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) November 19, 2019
Carlineo of Addison, N.Y., admitted last year to calling Omar’s Washington office and threatening to “put a bullet in her fucking skull.”
“Do you work for the Muslim Brotherhood? Why are you working for her, she’s a fucking terrorist,” Carlineo told a member of Omar’s staff during the call last March. “Somebody ought to put a bullet in her skull.”
Authorities later found a cache of weapons at Carlineo’s home, including several firearms and more than 1,300 rounds of ammunition, The Evening Tribune reported.
Carlineo, who was convicted of felony criminal mischief in 1998, was legally barred from owning any guns. As the Tribune noted, Carlineo had been found guilty of harassing a woman and destroying her property.
Omar, who is one of the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress, has faced an onslaught of intimidation and death threats since taking office last year.
Still, in her letter to Geraci, she stressed the need to battle such threats with compassion and not retribution.
“Threatening assassination of a public official in our country is dangerous to both the individual and our republic,” Omar wrote to the judge.
“But we must ask: who are we as a nation if we respond to threats of political retribution with retribution ourselves? The answer to hate is not more hate; it is compassion,” she added.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
