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Emailed threat yields five months in prison
CLEVELAND
A federal judge has sentenced a former Canfield woman to five months in prison, five months of home confinement and a year of supervised release after she pleaded guilty to making an interstate threat to injure a former Mill Creek MetroParks executive director with a .38-caliber gun.
Calling the threat “serious and vulgar,” U.S. District Judge Patricia A. Gaughan imposed the sentence Monday on Amy Beitzel, 53, who now resides in Mount Airy, Md.
In pleading guilty to the federal felony in March, Beitzel admitted emailing the threat July 12, 2014, from the Montgomery County Public Library in Rockville, Md., to Dennis Miller’s official work email address in Canfield via a Sunnyvale, Calif., server.
The email followed the controversial June 26, 2014, roundup and euthanasia of 238 geese in Mill Creek Park, which Miller approved as a goose population and nuisance-control measure without a park board resolution.
Beitzel’s sentencing occurred exactly three years after the euthanasia of the geese.
Miller resigned from his $87,500-a-year job as park system director, effective at the end of 2014.
Beitzel’s email to Miller said in part: “I will wreak vengeance on you. Watch your back. The 238 will be remembered. ... A well-placed .38 will do it.”
An enhancement in federal-sentencing advisory guidelines for threatening a public official put the recommended range for Beitzel at 18 to 24 months in prison.
However, in a sentencing memorandum, her lawyer, Daniel W. Taylor of Cleveland, noted her lack of prior criminal convictions, acceptance of responsibility through her guilty plea and expression of remorse.
Taylor asked the judge to consider “a combination of probation, home confinement, counseling and community service.”
The FBI investigated the case, and Justin Seabury Gould and Ranya Elzein, assistant U.S. attorneys, prosecuted it.