Thursday, September 18, 2014

U.S. v. Garcia (9th Cir. - Sept. 18, 2014)

Maybe you hate a former housemate of yours.  Maybe for totally irrational reasons, maybe for good ones, whatever.  You don't like her.  Okay.

Maybe you don't even want to hurt her.  Just scare her a little bit.  Reminder her of that time she had your car towed.  That's not a good quality in you.  At all.  You shouldn't do anything about it.

But if you reject this advice, for goodness sakes, do not decide that the way you make your feelings felt is to explode a pipe bomb in her car.  Doesn't matter if it was in the middle of the night, there was no one around, and no one got hurt (or was even meant to get hurt).

You exploded a pipe bomb.  That's now a federal offense.  As well as a profoundly serious one.  One for which you'll receive, as here, thirty five years in prison.  A stark contrast to the fairly brief period of probation you're likely to receive in state court if you slash its tires or (maybe) even if you steal it and drive it into a lake.

And your conviction and sentence will be affirmed by the Ninth Circuit.

Briefly put, there's pretty much no possible way to fill in the blank in the following sentence with something that makes sense:  "It's a nice day today.  I think I'll _________ with a pipe bomb."