An inmate who mailed a bomb to the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington and another to a federal courthouse in Alaska from a Georgia prison was sentenced to 80 additional years on Monday.
The inmate also attempted to send two other bombs through the U.S. Postal Service from the Georgia State Prison in Tattnall County, Ga., but those packages were intercepted by the authorities before delivery.
The inmate told agents from the Postal Inspector Service and the F.B.I.,that the bombs were sent as “gifts” and presented a list of demands that included sharing a cell with a romantic partner and a detailed list of commissary items for preferred food products, according to a sentencing memorandum and other records from the U.S. District Court in Southern Georgia.
In a statement, Bryan Stirling, the U.S. attorney for the District of South Carolina who prosecuted the case, said that the devices “were not only a threat to the recipients, but to every individual that unknowingly transported and delivered them.”
The inmate legally identifies as Lena Noel Summerlin, according to a sentencing memorandum written by Tina Maddox, her attorney. She is named in court documents and in a prosecutor’s news release as David Dwayne Cassady, 57.
Ms. Summerlin was already serving a life sentence in Georgia from a 1992 case for kidnapping, impersonating an officer and aggravated sodomy, according to state prison records.
The bombs were mailed as a “desperate cry for help” to reveal the conditions she and other inmates were living in, Ms. Maddox wrote in a court document. Ms. Maddox had not responded to requests for comment by Thursday afternoon.
Ms. Summerlin made and sent the first two working bombs through the Postal Service around Jan. 24, 2020, prosecutors said.
The bombs were “fashioned from various things from the prison,” said Veronica Hill, a spokeswoman for the U.S. District Court in South Carolina. Photos included in the court documents show bombs made with AA batteries, plastic containers and metal wiring. The bombs were made to respond to “a victim-actuated mechanism” that would cause them to heat up in proximity to an ignitable liquid, according to the sentencing memorandum.
The first two bombs were delivered, but nothing had taken place after three days, causing Ms. Summerlin to try “to bring attention to the matter by attempting to mail two additional bombs,” the prosecutors wrote in court documents.
Ms. Summerlin then told a corrections officer at the state prison, which has since closed, that she was unable to fit both packages in a mail receptacle and that they were bombs, the prosecutors said. The officer reported the matter to authorities.
In the ensuing investigation, Ms. Summerlin admitted to mailing the bombs, the prosecutors said. Prosecutors said that Ms. Summerlin said she had sent the bomb to the Department of Justice but refused to reveal the second location, stating, “I am losing any leverage that I may have.” A bomb was found at a Justice Department building in Washington, D.C., according to court records.
Ms. Summerlin wanted several things in exchange for revealing where the second bomb was headed, the prosecutors said. These demands included commissary items and to spend days in a cell with her partner, the prosecutors said. A handwritten list of the items requested included a family size bag of Skittles, six packs of Hostess Honey Buns and six 20-ounce bottles of Dr Pepper, according to the sentencing memorandum.
“If you have trouble finding an item or particular brand on this list, find something close to it and substitute,” Ms. Summerlin wrote at the top of the list included as an exhibit.
The same day as the investigation, a court employee at the federal courthouse in Anchorage noticed wires when she opened a manila envelope and hit a panic alarm. The courthouse was evacuated and a bomb squad responded to handle the package, which had Ms. Summerlin’s return address on it, the court records show.
The U.S. Postal Inspector Service did not respond to questions about how the bombs managed to make it through the postal system undetected.
Ms. Summerlin’s demands were also made in letters sent to the state agency involved in criminal investigations, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the prosecutors said. In the letters, she said that the bombs were sent because of conditions in the prison system including assaults she experienced, according to court records.
Ms. Summerlin sued a corrections officer in 2014 for sexual and physical abuse experienced in a Georgia state prison. The case went to trial, and a jury awarded her $200,000.
In court documents, her lawyer, Ms. Maddox, raised previous complaints about poor prison conditions in the state.
Ms. Maddox also included a 39-page letter written by Ms. Summerlin.
“My plan, under no circumstances was to impose harm on anyone,” Ms. Summerlin wrote. “It was simply to obtrude awareness of the downtrodden, murderous conditions at Georgia State Prison.”
This was not the first time Ms. Summerlin made threats, the prosecutors said. She was convicted in 2022 for conspiring to have another inmate killed, and had also sent a letter to the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections threatening him and his family. She had also sent threats to a U.S. District Attorney, the prosecutors said.
Judge J. Randal Hall, of U.S. District Court in Southern Georgia, sentenced Ms. Summerlin to two 40-year sentences in federal prison to be served consecutively, the prosecutors said. She is being held in Phillips State Prison in Buford, Ga., according to prison records.
Rylee Kirk reports on breaking news, trending topics and major developing stories for The Times.
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