A 24-year-old Los Angeles man was ordered to pay $3.5 million in restitution and spend more than eight years in jail for vandalizing and torching SUVs. U.S. District Judge Gary Klausner rejected defense calls for leniency in sentencing Caltech physics student William Cottrell, 24, whose professors described as incredibly brilliant. | If he's so bright, how come he got caught and convicted? |
Klausner said leniency would send the message "we're going to punish some people harder because they're stupid," the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. Prosecutors said Cottrell carried out the Aug. 22, 2003 arson attacks with Tyler Johnson, a Caltech graduate, and Johnson's girlfriend, Michie Oe. They have fled the country and have outstanding warrants. | Bet they're connected to one of the domestic enviromental terrorist groups like ELF. After little Billy spends some time in the slammer, he might be willing to make a deal to shave some time off. |
Prosecutors said the trio spray-painted anti-pollution messages on SUVs at three dealerships and torched two with gasoline Molotov cocktails. | Yup, that's got ELF written all over it. |
However, the second gas-bomb bounced from the SUV window and the car lot went up in flames. Fourteen SUVs and a parts building were destroyed and a nearby apartment building was threatened during the fire. Cottrell's lawyer plans to appeal the sentence.
Additional: At his trial, the prosecution had accused Cottrell of "arrogance" and a "towering superiority" toward people who did not share his environmental views. Cottrell had testified that SUV dealers were evil. The judge said he felt sorry for Cottrell, a doctoral candidate in the physics department at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, but he had only himself to blame. "What a talent to have wasted," Klausner said. Vandals used spray-paint to deface the vehicles with slogans such as "Fat, Lazy Americans," "polluter" and "ELF," for Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group. Prosecutors estimated the total damage at $2.3 million.
Defense lawyers argued that Cottrell had agreed with two friends to spray-paint vehicles, but was surprised when they began to hurl Molotov cocktails. Cottrell was arrested in March 2004 after authorities tracked e-mails sent to the Los Angeles Times. The sender said he was involved in the SUV attacks and affiliated with the Earth Liberation Front. | Well, he was only a doctoral candidate in the physics department, how was he to know you can trace a e-mail? |
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