A former Cornell University student has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for posting violent threats against members of the school's Jewish community last fall.
Patrick Dai, a 22-year-old from Pittsford, N.Y., pleaded guilty earlier this year to one felony count of "posting threats to kill or injure another person using interstate communications."
As part of that plea, he took responsibility for a series of messages threatening violence against Jewish people on campus that he posted to the Cornell section of an online discussion forum.
Dai wrote multiple posts from several anonymous usernames, including "gonna shoot up 104 west" (referring to a dining hall next to the Cornell Jewish Center) and "gonna bomb jewish house." He urged others, "if you see a jewish 'person' on campus follow them home and slit their throat." He also threatened to stab Jewish men, sexually assault any Jewish women he saw and "bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig jews."
Dai, who was a junior at the time, posted the messages in late October, weeks after Hamas' attack on Israel and at a moment when both antisemitic and Islamophobic sentiments were running high on U.S. college campuses and across the country.
The threats rattled a community already on edge. Following his arrest, the Cornell administration canceled a day of classes — designating it a "community day" due to "extraordinary stress" — and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul paid a visit to the Ithaca-based university.
Dai was suspended, and has remained in custody since October. He faced a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and three years of supervised release.
On Monday, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York announced that Dai had been sentenced to 21 months imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release, with terms including no contact with Cornell and restrictions on his internet use.
Federal prosecutors say the sentence shows that people who threaten others based on their identities and beliefs will be held accountable.
"Every student has the right to pursue their education without fear of violence based on who they are, how they look, where they are from or how they worship," Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said in a statement. "Antisemitic threats of violence, like the defendant's vicious and graphic threats here, violate that right."
Cornell University Police Chief Anthony Bellamy said the sentencing "affirms that threats against our community will not be tolerated." The university has not responded to NPR's request for comment.
Dai's lawyer calls his actions a 'misguided attempt' to garner support for Israel
Federal prosecutors said the court found that Dai's actions constitute a hate crime under federal sentencing guidelines, because they targeted Jewish students and substantially disrupted the university's core function of education.
"The defendant's threats terrorized the Cornell campus community for days and shattered the community's sense of safety," said U.S. Attorney Carla Freedman.
Dai's attorney, public defender Lisa Peebles, told NPR on Tuesday that her team had argued against the hate crime characterization.
She said Cornell's motivation for canceling classes — after Dai had already been arrested and issued an apology — was to give students a mental health day "as a result of the conflict" between Israel and Hamas.
"It was our position that Patrick does not hate Jewish people," she added.
Peebles said Dai has autism, though it was undiagnosed at the time of the postings, which she described in a court filing as a "misguided attempt to highlight Hamas' genocidal beliefs and garner support for Israel."
"He believed, wrongly, that the posts would prompt a 'blowback' against what he perceived as anti-Israel media coverage and pro-Hamas sentiment on campus," she wrote. "Patrick's flawed logic is a result of his autism. His intentions were the exact opposite of the public's perception. Patrick is not antisemitic and is not violent."
Federal prosecutors countered in their sentencing memorandum that the degree of disruption to the university rose to the level of "substantial." They questioned why Dai's posts included calls to action if he truly didn't mean to endanger his Jewish classmates, and why he didn't address his motivation in his subsequent apology post.
"It is impossible for the Court or anyone other than the defendant to know for certain what truly motivated the defendant at the time he made his horrific posts but his self-serving post hoc claims that they were designed to garner sympathy for the group he was threatening repeatedly and in the vilest way imaginable is contradicted by both the threats themselves as well as the 'apology' he issued after posting them," they wrote.
There may not be enough time for Dai's team to appeal
Peebles said Dai "functions socially at the age of between a five and 10 year old," and always had trouble relating to his peers but didn't understand why until he was diagnosed once in custody.
Citing his developmental disabilities and time served, Peebles had asked the court to sentence Dai to supervised release rather than additional imprisonment.
She told NPR she wants to appeal the hate crime-related enhancements to his sentence, but the timing of that process is "not really conducive to being heard before he's actually going to be released."
She said Dai has roughly another six months left to serve, based on his time in custody and good conduct. She pointed to a character letter submitted to the court by a corrections officer who described Dai as extremely intelligent, overly compliant and "kind to a fault, making him a victim to certain populations."
Peebles says Dai is "ashamed" of his actions, but also hopeful that he will get the support services he needs. She says he plans to voluntarily withdraw from Cornell and eventually pursue a vocation.
"He loves cleaning, he's discovered that while he's been in custody," she said, adding he's talked about potentially starting his own cleaning business.
Freedman, the U.S. attorney, wrote in a court filing that the government hopes Dai's "purported new found insight into his mental health issues will allow him in the future to reengage with society in a healthy productive manner."
"The government understands that college can be a difficult time for young people and is not unsympathetic to the defendant's claims that he felt socially isolated and depressed," she wrote. "That said, many people go through periods where they feel isolated and/or depressed and lots of people face mental health challenges. Those tests and challenges do not give anyone the right to terrorize their neighbors and classmates."
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