Skip to footer

Mississippi man pleads guilty to sending ricin-laced letters to President Obama

James Everett Dutschke entered the plea Friday during a hearing in US District Court in Oxford, Mississippi.

|
Thomas Wells/Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal/AP/File
James Everett Dutschke stands in the street near his home in Tupelo, Miss, in April 2013.
  • By Holbrook Mohr Associated Press

| OXFORD, Mississippi

A Mississippi man has pleaded guilty to sending poison-laced letters to President Barack Obama and other officials.

James Everett Dutschke entered the plea Friday during a hearing in U.S. District Court in Oxford, Mississippi.

The 42-year-old previously pleaded not guilty and denied sending the letters. He also denied a later charge that, while incarcerated, he tried to recruit someone else to send a ricin-tainted letter.

Dutschke has been jailed since April on charges of sending the letters to Obama, Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, and a Mississippi judge. The judge was the only one to receive a letter, though she was not harmed. The letters to Obama and Wicker were intercepted.

Prosecutors recommended a 25-year sentence. That sentence would run concurrently with any sentenceDutschke would face in state court, where he's facing unrelated fondling charges.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Mississippi man pleads guilty to sending ricin-laced letters to President Obama
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0117/Mississippi-man-pleads-guilty-to-sending-ricin-laced-letters-to-President-Obama
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe