{"id":1495,"date":"2008-08-05T17:03:11","date_gmt":"2008-08-05T17:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=1495"},"modified":"2008-08-05T17:03:11","modified_gmt":"2008-08-05T17:03:11","slug":"ricin_maker_pleads_guilty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2008\/08\/05\/ricin_maker_pleads_guilty\/","title":{"rendered":"Ricin Maker Pleads Guilty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;ve been following that bizarre story about the guy who was brewing up the deadly toxin ricin a little <a title=\"Ricin in Riverton?\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/2008\/03\/ricin_in_riverton\/\">too close to home<\/a> for my comfort, here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sltrib.com\/news\/ci_10099716\">the latest<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A former Utahn suspected of making ricin pleaded guilty Monday in a Las Vegas federal court to possession of the deadly toxin and possession of unregistered firearms.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As part of his plea, 57-year-old Roger Von Bergendorff agreed to forfeit a pistol and two silencers. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each count when sentenced Nov. 3 by U.S. District Judge Robert C. Jones. Prosecutors are recommending 37 months behind bars.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now, I&#8217;m not really a reactionary throw-away-the-key kind of guy, but doesn&#8217;t &#8220;37 months&#8221; and &#8220;agreeing to forfeit&#8221; a gun sound a little light for making a poison so potent that a drop the size of a pinhead can kill a person? And why does he have to &#8220;agree&#8221; to give up the pistol and two silencers? Aren&#8217;t silencers illegal, and given everything else we know about this guy, shouldn&#8217;t the weapon simply be confiscated as a matter of course?<\/p>\n<p>One other thing that struck me: the court records reportedly say Bergendorff knowingly possessed the biological agent for an &#8220;unjustified purpose.&#8221; Isn&#8217;t that a cute little piece of jargon&#8230; &#8220;unjustified purpose.&#8221; What would be a justified purpose for owning this stuff?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;ve been following that bizarre story about the guy who was brewing up the deadly toxin ricin a little too close to home for my comfort, here&#8217;s the latest: A former Utahn suspected of making ricin pleaded guilty Monday in a Las Vegas federal court to possession of the deadly toxin and possession of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-color"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}