A Cornell pupil who posted antisemitic homicide threats on the college’s Web page — then claimed he solely did it to “garner sympathy” for Jewish individuals — was sentenced to 21 months behind bars Monday.
Patrick Dai, 22, was handed down the judgement by Syracuse federal Chief Decide Brenda Sannes after he copped a plea in April whereas sustaining he threatened to kill Jews on campus in a misguided bid to spotlight the atrocities of Hamas.
Dai’s lawyer, Lisa Peebles, later instructed The Put up by electronic mail that she plans to enchantment the sentence since she disagrees with how federal sentencing pointers have been interpreted for her shopper, together with involving two will increase to his imprisonment vary.
She additionally famous that Dai had already been in jail for almost 10 months since his November arrest.
“He has greater than 9 months within the county jail,” Peebles stated. “I hoped for time served.”
The lawyer had requested the choose for extra leniency, arguing Dai was recognized with autism after the incident — a medical situation she says would clarify his crime.
“He believed, wrongly, that the posts would immediate a ‘blowback’ towards what he perceived as anti-Israel media protection and pro-Hamas sentiment on campus,” Peebles wrote in courtroom papers final month. “Patrick’s flawed logic is a results of his autism.”
Prosecutors argued that Dai ought to obtain a sentence inside the advisable guideline vary, which was 27 to 33 months in jail. Decide Sannes final resolution was nonetheless barely beneath what was advisable.
“The defendant terrorized a campus neighborhood for days and horrified the nation at a really risky time,” prosecutors wrote in sentencing papers final month.
The feds stated Dai’s mental-health struggles didn’t give him a free move to interrupt the regulation.
“Many individuals undergo durations the place they really feel remoted and/or depressed and plenty of individuals face psychological well being challenges,” prosecutors argued of their filling. “These assessments and challenges don’t give anybody the proper to terrorize their neighbors and classmates.”
Dai — an engineering pupil and former junior on the Ivy league college — made a number of posts on the college’s Web page simply weeks after the Oct. 7 bloodbath carried out by the Palestinian terror group Hamas in Israel.
On Oct. 28, Dai wrote heinous feedback on the location, together with, “Jewish individuals have to be killed,” “gonna bomb jewish home,” and “be careful pig jews. jihad is coming.”
He additionally stated in a submit Oct. 29 that he would shoot up a eating corridor that caters to Jewish college students and kill different Jews with an “assault rifle.”
Later that day, he retracted the feedback and issued an apology. He was arrested two days afterward, on Oct. 31.
Peebles beforehand instructed The Put up that Dai was triggered after he heard feedback by a Cornell professor saying he discovered the Hamas assault “exhilarating.” The feedback got here across the identical time Hamas tried to falsely pin a hospital bombing in Gaza on Israel.
“He was depressed, he struggled with autism, he had not been recognized but, and he had a breakdown and got here up with this concept to do these posts,” the lawyer stated on the time.
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