David Jerry Paule, 49, of Indian Springs, was sentenced today to 51 months in prison for threatening a federal judge. Because the judge’s chambers were located in Reno, the federal District of Nevada is recused from the case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California is handling the case.
According to court documents, in 2016, while incarcerated in a Nevada state prison, Paule filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada.
In January 2017, Paule and the other parties to the lawsuit agreed to a settlement and the case was dismissed.
After the case was dismissed, between May and July 2017, Paule sent the U.S. District Judge who had presided over the lawsuit three letters in which he demanded that the judge reinstate his lawsuit and threatened to kill the judge and members of the judge’s family if the judge did not comply with his demands. Paule sent each of the three letters from a Nevada state prison.
This case was the product of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Marshals Service. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Brian A. Fogerty and Roger Yang of the Eastern District of California are prosecuting the case.
