OAKLAND -- Steven Crump was sent to prison six years ago for threatening to kill an Alameda County supervisor and former county Sheriff Charlie Plummer in a profanity-laced email that included threats of forcing both to perform oral sex on each other and him.
But no sooner was Crump released from prison, then he again sent a profanity-laced note to a public figure threatening death, a prosecutor said Tuesday in opening statements of a trial against the 49-year-old Berkeley resident.
Crump, who has refused to be present during his trial, is charged with one count of making a criminal threat and one count of identity theft. Prosecutors say Crump sent a letter to Oakland Nation of Islam minister Keith Muhammad in which he says, "I will do all that I can in my power to have you killed! "
Crump sent the letter from the campus of California State University, East Bay where he was enrolled and signed it as Leann Christianson, a professor Crump had recently become frustrated with over an exam that was given in a class, said deputy district attorney Eric Swalwell.
Upon receiving the letter, Muhammad quickly turned it over to the Oakland police who immediately contacted Christianson to verify that the professor did not send it. In discussions with Christianson, police learned that Crump was a student and had recently become frustrated with the professor.
Knowing Crump's history, police began an investigation, securing a search warrant to look through his computer and conducting a fingerprint analysis of the letter, Swalwell said.
On the computer, police found Internet searches for Muhammad, Your Black Muslim Bakery, and Nation of Islam. The fingerprint analysis found three fingerprints all belonging to Crump, Swalwell said.
"This is not the first time defendant Crump has sent a threatening letter to a public official; it's a pattern," Swalwell told the jury of eight men and three women. "Only one person had motive, and only one person's fingerprints were found on the letter." Crump's attorney, Joann Kingston, agrees that her client sent the letter but said the charges filed against him are not accurate. Kingston said that Crump should not be charged with a criminal threat because the letter, while hateful and obviously "the ravings of a lunatic," was never treated as a serious threat by police. Kingston said her client never outwardly threatened to kill anyone.
"It's hateful speech. It's crude. You're not going to like it; I don't like it," Kingston said. "The idea here is, are these communications hateful speech or are they things that will leave someone with a clear and present danger that someone is going to kill them?"
Kingston said the letter is simply hateful speech and that the Oakland Police Department's non-urgency in tracking down Crump -- he was arrested four months after the letter was sent -- proves that even police did not believe the "threat" was real.
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