Man who blogged ’judges must die’ sentenced to 33 months

Harold "Hal" Turner, an Internet radio shock jock popular with white supremacists, was sentenced today to nearly three years in prison for threatening federal judges.

Turner, who is 48 and lives in North Bergen, N.J., addressed the court before his sentencing, delivering a rambling 50-minute diatribe that criticized his conviction, Chicago politics, and a "thin-skinned" federal judiciary.

"This may go down as the first Bolshevik show trial to go on in the history of United States," Turner proclaimed in Brooklyn federal court, referring to Communist party persecutions in the Soviet Union.

Turner spoke at length about his work as a FBI informant, infiltrating extremist groups and passing on information about threats to the U.S. government - including one possible threat targeting the president.

Although he was betraying the inner workings of groups consisting of neo-Nazis, anti-Semitic activists, and white supremacists to his FBI handlers, Turner admitted to stoking simultaneously the flames of discontent on his Internet show and on his website blog.

He did so, he insisted, in order to smoke out extremists who posed a threat to the United States, which he says he dearly loves.

But he also conceded that he pushed the envelope with inflammatory speech because it "shocks the radio audience." He said that his motivation was unabashed capitalism - to make more money.

"I filled a niche market - I appealed to people with extremist views," Turner said.

While admitting that he did not always agree with his listeners' sentiments, his edgy radio program where the "spin is always extreme" created new audiences and new advertisers, thus generating more money, he said.

"The personality you hear on the radio is not real life," Turner said.

He was convicted in August for threatening federal judges in Illinois by advocating on his Internet show that they should be killed.

Turner insisted that his conviction was unfair, because he was simply expressing his First Amendment right and posed no threat to the judges' safety.

"I advocated violence against those judges," Turner said. "But I did so in the context of the Internet. I delineated the difference between a threat and an opinion."

The threats stemmed from a 2009 decision by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Illinois by Judges William Bauer, Frank Easterbrook, and Richard Posner.

Their ruling upheld a district court decision dismissing lawsuits that challenged handgun bans in Chicago and Oak Park, Ill.

The federal case against Turner was moved from Illinois to Brooklyn to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

Juries could not agree on a verdict in Turner's first two trials, but he was convicted on the third.