Man pleads guilty to sending ricin-tainted letters to Obama
James Everett Dutschke stood in the street near his home in Tupelo, Miss. on April 23, 2013. Dutschke has pleaded guilty to sending poison-laced letters to President Barack Obama and other officials. (AP Photo/Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Thomas Wells, File)
OXFORD, Miss. » A Mississippi man has pleaded guilty to sending poison-laced letters to President Barack Obama and other officials.
James Everett Dutschke entered the plea today during a hearing in U.S. District Court in Oxford, Miss.
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 sentence Dutschke would face in state court, where he’s facing unrelated fondling charges.
