Georgia inmate gets 80 years for making bombs, mailing them to US courthouse, Justice Department

STATESBORO, Ga. (AP) — A person already in prison has been sentenced to 80 years in federal custody after authorities said the inmate built two bombs while behind bars and mailed them to a federal courthouse in Anchorage, Alaska, and the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday announced the sentence for the inmate authorities identified as David Dwayne Cassady, 57, who was incarcerated in a state prison in Georgia when the devices were made, authorities said. The inmate pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted malicious use of explosive materials.

The inmate has severe anxiety and gender dysphoria, defense lawyer Tina Maddox wrote in a sentencing memo to the court. The crimes were “acts of desperation born out of unrelenting abuse, hopelessness, and mental distress,” Maddox wrote. The defendant is a transgender woman and now goes by the name Lena Noel Summerlin, the lawyer said in the July 8 court document.

The indictment says both bombs were made at a state prison in Tattnall County, Georgia, and mailed from the prison. The document does not detail how the bombs were built or where the materials were obtained.

The bombs were functional and had the capabilities to explode, a plea agreement states. The inmate admitted to mailing them “in retaliation for prison conditions,” it said.

Since the early 1990s, the inmate has been held in a variety of Georgia prisons after being convicted of more than a dozen crimes including kidnapping and aggravated sodomy, according to records from the Georgia Department of Corrections.

“This defendant’s devices were not only a threat to the recipients, but to every individual that unknowingly transported and delivered them,” U.S. Attorney Bryan Stirling said in a statement.

The defendant “intended to incite fear” in the targets and among the public, said Rodney Hopkins, the inspector in charge of the Atlanta division of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.