TACOMA, Washington -- The judge didn't just throw the book at Jim Bell, he threw it twice and made him pay for extra damages.
Bell, the Libertarian essayist and contributor to the Cypherpunk mailing list, was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison for stalking Jeff Gordon, a federal agent who had been investigating his activities.
He was given two consecutive sentences of five years each, meaning that he will not begin to serve the second sentence until the first one is over. Most often people convicted of multiple charges in a single trial serve their sentences concurrently, so that both begin and end at the same time.
According to the sentencing recommendations read in court by Federal District Court Judge Jack Tanner, the standard sentence for a case like this would have been five to seven years, but the prosecutors recommended taking additional factors leading to "an upward revision" of the sentencing guidelines, allowing the judge to extend the time he will have to spend in prison.
Tanner agreed, adding a $10,000 fine and several parole restrictions to the 10 years in jail.
Bell first raised the government's ire with his 1996 essay, "Assassination Politics," describing a system for contracting for political assassinations of federal agents via the Internet.
In April he was convicted of two counts of crossing state lines "with the intent to harass another person," and using a fax machine to send a threatening message. The jury in that trial deadlocked on three additional counts.
Defense attorney Robert Leen spent nearly 30 minutes arguing for a reduced sentence of 18 months in prison for Bell, asking the judge to make the punishment proportional to the crime, which he characterized as being relatively harmless, if highly offensive behavior. He argued that Bell's activities were not nearly as much of a threat to society as selling five pounds of cocaine, a crime that carries a mandatory 10-year sentence.
"He says dumb things, but that doesn't mean he committed a crime that is worth 120 months," Leen told the court. "He's just a lout. He says mean things about people without knowing what he is saying."
Throughout his argument for leniency, Leen disparaged his client, who has, in turn, been objecting to having Leen as his lawyer since last December. The defense attorney called his client "delusional" and said that Bell "has a bizarre and ugly philosophy" and "has the ability to do wonderfully terrible things. But he hasn't," Leen added.
Judge Tanner spoke quietly and without any obvious emotion, but tipped his hand throughout the defense presentation by interrupting Leen to question his logic. When Leen said that Bell "hasn't done anything but say dumb things," Tanner asked, "Is society supposed to wait until he does?"
"Just because I'm in law enforcement and that's what I wanted to do, I have to put up with that (threatening behavior)?" Tanner demanded. "Once I sign on as a law enforcement officer, then I am putting my family to the same risk as I am signing on to?"
Given his chance to address the court, Jim Bell spent nearly an hour arguing that what he had been doing was just investigating the agents who were investigating him.
"I didn't investigate Jeff Gordon because he is a federal official," Bell said. "I was forced to investigate him because he chose to infiltrate the Multnomah County Common Law Court" (a Libertarian organization Bell said he had sometimes been involved with).
He said that after an incident in 1997 when his car had been followed by a number of cars he suspected of belonging to federal agents, "I decided that what I thought was happening was actually happening -- there was an effort to harass me and to stalk me."
Interspersed with those arguments, Bell also detailed the legal injustices he claims he suffered in the course of the trial. Bell has filed a number of appeals in the case already, and seen some of them dismissed by the appeals court as "frivolous."
Bell said in court that he had also filed a civil lawsuit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Practices Act, in which he has named virtually everyone involved in the case, including the judge, the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robb London and his own attorney as defendants. He used that lawsuit as the basis for another attempt to disqualify Judge Tanner, as well as a reason for not reading the pre-sentencing report or answering questions he was asked during the proceedings.
"I'm not a lawyer -- I don't even play one on TV," Bell said at one point, "but I've done enough research to know that I have an arguable and non-frivolous cause of action." He argued that the April trial had been illegal because it was held before the appeals court threw out his prior lawsuit.
Judge Tanner sat through Bell's presentation impassively and largely without comment before announcing that he was siding with the prosecution and the probation department on all points.
"Mr. Bell is devastated by the harsh sentence of the court," Leen said afterward. "He has instructed me to file a notice of appeal" of the sentence. The lawyer said he would continue to act as Bell's attorney "until excused."
