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Federal prosecutors on Tuesday announced the sentence for the
inmate authorities identified as David Dwayne Cassady, 57, who
was incarcerated in a state prison in Georgia when the devices
were made, authorities said. The inmate pleaded guilty to two
counts of attempted malicious use of explosive materials.
The inmate has severe anxiety and gender dysphoria, defense
lawyer Tina Maddox wrote in a sentencing memo to the court. The
crimes were “acts of desperation born out of unrelenting abuse,
hopelessness, and mental distress,” Maddox wrote. The defendant
is a transgender woman and now goes by the name Lena Noel
Summerlin, the lawyer said in the July 8 court document.
The indictment says both bombs were made at a state prison in
Tattnall County, Georgia, and mailed from the prison. The
document does not detail how the bombs were built or where the
materials were obtained.
The bombs were functional and had the capabilities to explode, a
plea agreement states. The inmate admitted to mailing them “in
retaliation for prison conditions,” it said.
Since the early 1990s, the inmate has been held in a variety of
Georgia prisons after being convicted of more than a dozen
crimes including kidnapping and aggravated sodomy, according to
records from the Georgia Department of Corrections.
“This defendant’s devices were not only a threat to the
recipients, but to every individual that unknowingly transported
and delivered them,” U.S. Attorney Bryan Stirling said in a
statement.
The defendant “intended to incite fear" in the targets and among
the public, said Rodney Hopkins, the inspector in charge of the
Atlanta division of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
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