Sex offender gets 4 months for threatening senator (Feinstein and Boxer)

[alp227]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

(07-13) 17:05 PDT SAN FRANCISCO --

A registered sex offender has been sentenced to four months in federal prison for sending an e-mail in which he threatened to kill a U.S. senator if she didn't oppose legislation that would end environmental protections for wolves.

Tras Gustav Karlsson Berg, 35, was released from federal custody last week because he has already served his time. But he will remain jailed in Marin County because of a probation violation, his attorney said.

On Feb. 24, Berg sent an e-mail to the California senator reading, "I'm going to shoot you with a high-powered rifle and bomb your house with poison gas the way wolf hunters do if you don't do everything you can to oppose legislation that would eliminate Endangered Species Act protections for wolves across the country," according to court records.

The senator who received the e-mail wasn't identified. In pronouncing sentence last week, however, U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney ordered Berg to stay away from both California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and sources said both senators had received the e-mail.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/07/13/BAE31KA50N.DTL

[wpelb]

1. Registered sex offender?

Given his background, would he have gotten more time if he'd threatened to rape one or both of the Senators?

[greiner3]

2. "Swx offender"

I thought it would have been "diaper" David Vitter but you never know.

[rasputin1952]

3. Weird how "registered sex offender" had anything to do w/this...

oh wait, it didn't.

I have no problem w/the guy doing time for threatening others, but he threatened to kill them, not rape them, what the sex offender thing had to do w/this is poor journalism at best, outright condemnation over a situation that had nothing to do w/the charges.

[mntleo2]

4. He probably did it to go back in

...while prison is a dangerous place for sex offenders, it is worse out here. Often they isolate these guys in prison and then it is a safer environment for them.

Unless he was a violent sex offender, there is less than a 5% chance he will ever re-offend again (official stats). But finding a job, a home, and any family outside those walls is probably nil. His fate is to live on the streets. Living where it is warm, somewhat safe and you eat, is better.

I work with a lot of street people and many of them are sex offenders. Many of them highly trained but nobody will hire them and if they try to secure an apartment, once their background is checked they cannot rent. there is no place for them to go and no job they can work.

Sex offenders are about anyone's punching bag and hated, they are the modern day leper. I cannot tell you how many "good" people take it upon themselves to beat the crap out of one once they find out who he is. In my state just in the last year 4 were murdered by people who just hated them, they were not victims, they just felt they deserved to die.

So why not threaten a senator about wolves and go back where you can at least have a place to sleep? My heart goes out to this poor man. The fact that we think lifelong punishment is somehow "better" is shooting ourselves in the foot if we think we are making our world a safer place. Reacting out of desperation when you have nothing to lose seems "better" for these guys because there is no hope of a better life outside prison walls

Cat in Seattle