Alaska man arrested for threatening messages to justices – SCOTUSblog

An Alaska man was arrested on Wednesday after he was indicted on expenses of threatening to kill and injure six Supreme Court docket justices and two of their relations, the Division of Justice introduced on Thursday.

Over a 16-month interval between March 2023 and July 2024, Panos Anastasiou allegedly despatched greater than 465 messages by way of the Supreme Court docket’s web site. Starting in early January of this yr, he started to ship threatening messages to the justices and their relations, who are usually not recognized within the 11-page indictment (h/t Jacqueline Thomson of Bloomberg Legislation) by identify.

These messages, in response to the indictment, contained “violent, racist, and homophobic rhetoric coupled with threats of assassination through torture, hanging and firearms, and inspired others to take part within the acts of violence.”

Legal professional Normal Merrick Garland denounced the threats. “Our justice system,” Garland stated, “depends upon the power of judges to make their selections based mostly on the regulation, and never on worry. Our democracy depends upon the power of public officers to do their jobs with out fearing for his or her lives or the security of their households.”

Within the wake of the Might 2022 leak of the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Ladies’s Well being Group, Garland introduced that he had elevated safety on the justices’ houses. In June 2022, a California man was charged with tried homicide of a Supreme Court docket justice after he was arrested close to the Maryland house of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. A trial in that case is scheduled to start in June 2025.

This text was initially revealed at Howe on the Court docket.