United States v. Tomkins

Tomkins sent threatening letters to investment firms and their employees and then mailed packages to investment managers containing what appeared to be pipe bombs. The homemade devices consisted of a plastic pipe holding gunpowder, lead pellets, and an igniter connected to live batteries. Letters warned that the recipients were only alive because Tomkins left one wire on each device unattached. Investigators identified Tomkins using purchasing records for the stocks referred to in his letters. Postal inspectors obtained search warrants for his home and storage lockers. The searches revealed two additional pipe bombs, drafts of the letters, bomb-making materials, information about Tomkins’s targets, and records related to the stocks mentioned in his threats. Tomkins was convicted of mailing threatening communications, 18 U.S.C. 876(b), illegally possessing firearms, 26 U.S.C. 5861(d), and using a firearm in connection with a crime of violence, 18 U.S.C. 924(c)(1)(A), (c)(1)(B)(ii) and sentenced to 37 years in prison. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, rejecting arguments that the district court erred by barring defense that the devices were meant as hoaxes, admitting an x-ray of a device that the government failed to turn over until mid-trial, and refusing to suppress evidence from searches of his home and storage lockers. View "United States v. Tomkins" on Justia Law