Florida resident sentenced to 14 months in prison for threatening Chief Justice John Roberts

A man in Florida who threatened to kill Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts was sentenced to 14 months in prison on Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard sentenced Neal Brij Sidhwaney after he pleaded guilty to one count of making an interstate threat to injure back in December.

Sidhwaney left an “expletive-laden” and “threatening” voicemail to the office of the Supreme Court last July, specifically targeting Roberts, according to the Justice Department. “On the voicemail message Sidhwaney identified himself by name and repeatedly threatened to kill a specific United States Supreme Court Justice.”

The justice was later identified as Roberts in a competency assessment of Sidhwaney that was filed online with a federal court in Florida.

Justices have been the targets of threats before.

In a separate incident, a man named Nicholas Roske, from California, threatened to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh and was arrested in 2022 outside of Kavanaugh’s home with a bag that contained a gun and burglary tools, according to CNN.

Roske has pleaded “not guilty” to one charge of attempting to murder Kavanaugh. Roske’s attorneys said they are in talks with prosecutors “regarding a pretrial resolution.”

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Threats against public officials have risen in recent years, according to a report by the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center. In the past decade, as of last fall, 501 threats against public officials have ended up with federal charges.

Threats against military and law enforcement officials were the most prevalent, including judges, according to the report, and the threats spiked in 2017 and 2021 following presidential elections.