SACRAMENTO — Eric McDavid, who went on the road to learn what was beyond his middle-class, suburban Sacramento upbringing and returned a prisoner, was sentenced Thursday to 19 years and seven months in prison after a federal judge rejected his arguments that McDavid had been entrapped by an FBI informant assigned to infiltrate the anti-war movement.
At the conclusion of a lengthy hearing before a crowded courtroom, U.S. District Judge Morrison C. England Jr. found McDavid's plan to "disrupt government and commercial installations" overrides his lack of a criminal history and a reputation among family and friends as "a peaceful individual."
McDavid, 30, was found guilty by a jury in September of conspiring with two others to burn or blow up a federal facility, and prosecutors argued that the judge should apply a federal "terrorism enhancement" statute. he indictment. McDavid's attorney said that if a conspiracy existed to bomb a U.S. Forest Service genetics lab in Placerville and the Nimbus Dam and neighboring fish hatchery in Rancho Cordova, it was between McDavid and "Anna," an undercover FBI operative with whom McDavid was infatuated.
The two had met at various anti-war demonstrations, including the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York.
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