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Put extortionist who threatened Betras on house arrest, public defenders urge
YOUNGSTOWN
Public defenders for a man who mailed extortion letters to Atty. David Betras and threatened to damage or destroy his law office with an explosive want a federal judge to impose probation with home confinement rather than a prison term.
The U.S. Probation Office, however, has calculated a guideline sentencing range of 78 to 97 months in prison for Charles J. Reighard, 68, of Burghill, who pleaded guilty as charged to mailing the letters and making the explosive threat.
Saying he and his family fear Reighard, Betras said he wants Reighard to go to prison, but Betras didn’t specify how long he thinks the prison term should be.
“I know when he’s locked up, he’s not going to be able to lash out at me,” said Betras, adding that he will make a victim-impact statement at the sentencing hearing.
Betras also is chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party.
U.S. District Court Judge Sara Lioi in Akron is scheduled to sentence Reighard at 11 a.m. Wednesday in Cleveland.
In calling for probation with house arrest, federal public defenders Timothy C. Ivey and Claire C. Curtis cited Reighard’s age, mental and physical illness, family and community ties, low probability of re-offending and acceptance of responsibility for his actions as reasons for keeping him out of prison.
“The bomb did not contain any explosive powder and could not have been detonated,” they wrote of the metal pipe with end caps and a fuse found outside Betras’ Canfield law office last Oct. 16.
“Imprisonment would be an unnecessarily severe punishment,” Ivey and Curtis wrote.
Reighard, a former Betras client, sent extortion letters to Betras last September and October in which he threatened to injure Betras and his family, the indictment said.
One of the letters demanded $4 million, the FBI said.
Betras represented Reighard, who was charged in 1999 with vandalism over allegations he caused new cars to catch fire by deliberately driving a car into them at the General Motors Lordstown plant where he was employed.
Betras negotiated a deal in which Reighard pleaded guilty to telecommunications harassment and was placed on five years’ probation.
Reighard claimed, however, that Betras, the prosecutor and the judge conspired to get him fired from GM and to “ruin his life,” according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.
Mike Tobin, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, declined to say what sentence that office, which is prosecuting the extortion case, will seek for Reighard.