The east entrance of the federal building holding the U.S. courthouse is seen on July 8, 2024. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
A woman sentenced to life in a Georgia state prison has been convicted of manufacturing and sending bombs to federal courthouses in Anchorage and Washington, D.C. while incarcerated.
No one was injured by the incendiary devices, which were detected and defused.
Lena Summerlin, who is transgender and is identified in court records by her birth name, David Cassady, pleaded guilty to two federal felonies and was sentenced last week to two concurrent 40-year terms in federal prison. She is already serving a life sentence in state prison for a variety of crimes.
Three other charges were dismissed as part of a plea deal signed in March.
Summerlin’s sentence, announced last week by prosecutors in South Carolina, was covered by Court Watch, a national newsletter covering events in federal courthouses across the country.
According to court documents, in January 2020, Summerlin sent two crude devices consisting of batteries and alcohol-based hand sanitizer to the U.S. Justice Department in Washington, D.C. and the federal courthouse in Anchorage.
“My plan, under no circumstances, was to impose harm on anyone,” Summerlin said in a sentencing document. “It was simply to obtrude awareness of the downtrodden, murderous conditions at Georgia State Prison.”
Summerlin has repeatedly alleged that conditions in Georgia prisons are violent and did not provide adequate protections for LGBTQ individuals. In 2018, she won a financial settlement after physical and sexual assault by other inmates and a prison guard.
As part of her plea deal, she requested that she serve her sentence in a federal prison, where she believes conditions are better for transgender inmates.
Sentencing documents were unclear as to why Summerlin chose to send a bomb to Anchorage, and federal officials familiar with the case did not answer questions about the incident.
According to court documents, the device Summerlin sent to Anchorage was opened by a clerk who triggered a panic alarm when she noticed wires in the package.
U.S. Marshals evacuated the courthouse, contacted bomb technicians and authorities.
Summerlin manufactured three other similar devices that were not sent through the mail. When the devices sent to Anchorage and Washington, D.C. were not immediately discovered, she announced her plans to prison officials in Georgia.
It was not clear why federal prosecutors waited four years after the 2020 incident to charge Summerlin with a crime. The case was filed in Georgia’s southern U.S. District Court but prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Carolina.
In a sentencing memorandum, prosecutors wrote that regardless of Summerlin’s reasons for sending the devices, they “cannot mitigate or alleviate the seriousness of this case. The Defendant put innocent people in harms way who had no contribution to any alleged mistreatment in prison.”
