Texas ricin mailer sentenced to 18 years

Judge rejects actress’s plea for less

A U.S. deputy marshal escorts Shannon Guess Richardson out of federal court Wednesday in Texarkana, Texas, after she was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
A U.S. deputy marshal escorts Shannon Guess Richardson out of federal court Wednesday in Texarkana, Texas, after she was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

TEXARKANA, Texas -- A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a former actress to 18 years in prison for mailing letters containing ricin to President Barack Obama, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a Washington, D.C.-based gun-control advocate.

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Shannon Guess Richardson was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Michael Schneider during a nearly two-hour hearing on the Texas side of the Texarkana federal courthouse, where the 36-year-old defendant told the judge that she wasn't in her "right mind" when she mailed the letters last year.

Richardson, a former actress with a degree in early-childhood education, pleaded guilty in December to a single charge of developing, producing, possessing and transferring a biological agent for use as a weapon.

She also admitted that she lied to federal investigators in an attempt to frame her husband as the sender of the letters.

At the time of the plea, Richardson agreed to the 18-year sentence. But Wednesday, she asked the judge to reject the agreement and impose a lower sentence.

In response, Schneider said he felt the agreed-upon sentence was appropriate and reflected the severity of the crime.

"This offense put many lives in danger and threatened public officials at the highest level of government. The defendant claims that she did not intend to harm anyone, but certainly her actions could have had grave consequences," the judge said ruling from the bench.

In addition to the prison term, Schneider ordered Richardson to pay about $367,000 in restitution to her "victims," whom he did not refer to by name. He also ordered that she serve five years of supervised release after she is released from prison.

Schneider's ruling came after the Texas woman spoke for more than 40 minutes.

Referring to several pages of handwritten notes and at times pausing to silently cry or wipe away tears, Richardson apologized to the president and told the judge she never meant to harm anyone by mailing the toxin-coated letters.

"I do love my country, and I respect my president," Richardson said.

"I can tell you this is something I would never do in my right mind," she added.

After Schneider questioned whether she understood that she put many public officials at risk, Richardson said she didn't think of that when she mailed the letters.

"When I first put those in, I thought there was detection, that they wouldn't get opened, that there were things in place to protect from that," she said.

In court papers, federal agents have disclosed that they were able to track the letters back to their origin by using quick scientific tests and a previously secret computer system that takes images of every piece of mail sent through the U.S. Postal Service.

But those advanced forensic techniques were used only after the letters were discovered.

The letters, which were mailed in May 2013, were intercepted before they could reach Obama or Bloomberg. But gun-control advocate Mark Glaze was exposed to ricin when he opened the letter addressed to him. The toxin can be fatal if ingested. Glaze was the head of a gun-control advocacy organization that Bloomberg co-led at the time.

Assistant U.S. Attorney L. Frank Coan Jr. said Wednesday that no one, including Glaze, was seriously injured or sickened by the toxin but it was clear that Richardson knew what she was doing when she mailed the letters.

"There's no question about her state of mind. This conduct was deliberate," Coan told the judge.

Richardson's attorney, Tonda Curry, acknowledged that her client wasn't legally insane at the time she sent the letters. But she argued her client made a bad choice while she was in a desperate situation.

"Ms. Richardson is not a person with an evil heart," Curry said. "It appears that she was a person in a desperate situation -- whatever her motives, whether trying to get away from her husband or trying to get rid of him by setting him up."

Curry referred to Richardson's claims that Nathan Richardson, her former husband, had abused her and her children and had duped her into sending the ricin letters.

Federal authorities have said that after the letters were made public, Richardson traveled to Shreveport on May 30 and told FBI agents that her husband had sent the letters.

Agents later found ricin at the couple's New Boston, Texas, home as well as castor beans, the source of the toxin. They also found computer files that contained the text of the letters, the three recipients' addresses and records showing that the letters had been printed while her husband was at work.

After Richardson's arrest on June 7, 2013, federal prosecutors disclosed that she had purchased the ricin ingredients and supplies over the Internet about three weeks before she mailed the letters.

On Wednesday, Richardson told the judge that she was motivated to send the letters largely because she saw it as a way to get away from her husband.

"The violence that me and my children experienced at the hand of Nathan was insane," Richardson said.

She also maintained that Nathan Richardson was involved in sending the ricin-laced letters.

After the hearing Wednesday, Nathan Richardson's attorney, John Delk, denied that his client had done anything wrong.

"Nathan did everything to help her children," Delk said.

"Nathan is happy to be getting back to life as close to normal as possible. He has cooperated with federal authorities from the beginning. We deny all of the allegations," Delk said.

Since Shannon Richardson's arrest, the couple has divorced, and Nathan Richardson has been granted custody of their 1-year-old son. The child was born while Shannon Richardson was in federal custody.

Richardson's accusations against her former husband were among several others she made during the hearing. She also said that FBI agents and federal prosecutors promised that she would be sentenced to 18 months in prison if she cooperated, a contention that Coan, the assistant U.S. attorney, denied.

Richardson also claimed that guards at various county jails had denied her necessary medical care and housed her in a cell strewn with blood and feces while she was pregnant.

She told the judge she suffers sudden drops in blood pressure and a hernia and has been denied medication to help the conditions. She said she also passed up opportunities to escape from jail, even when a guard left her keys in Richardson's presence.

"I took it to her," Richardson said referring to the keys. "I wasn't trying to escape."

Richardson said she's cooperated with federal agents and helped Texas authorities in shutting down a child-prostitution ring and solving two murder cases since her incarceration.

Contacted Wednesday afternoon, officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety said they were researching the validity of Richardson's claims.

Richardson's appeals to Schneider mirrored those she wrote in letters to the judge. He stopped her several times during the hearing to ask if she was just rehashing what she had already told him.

"Are you wanting to tell me about this to tell the public, or is it to tell me about the circumstances of your case?" Schneider asked.

"With all that in mind, I'll just skip to the next section," Richardson replied.

She spent the majority of her time talking about parts of her life before she sent the letters, when she was a mother who volunteered in her children's classrooms and taught them to take responsibility for their actions.

She said she hasn't seen her six children, ranging in age from 1 to 20, since her arrest last year.

"Four hundred and four days. That's how long it's been since I've seen my babies," she said, noting that since his birth, she hasn't seen or touched her youngest child, the only one she had with Nathan Richardson.

None of her children attended the hearing Wednesday. Only Laura Thornhill, a pastor from a jailhouse ministry in which Richardson participates, testified on her behalf.

Richardson said she's written to her children and other family members in Alabama and Georgia several times over the 14 months she's been jailed.

No one responded, she said.

A Section on 07/17/2014

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