Judge Now Receiving Death Threats Over Muslim Compound Ruling

A New Mexico judge’s life was threatened and her courthouse was placed on lockdown after she cleared the way for five defendants arrested on child abuse charges at a squalid makeshift living compound, where a 3-year-old boy’s body was found, to be released on bail pending trial, officials said.

Judge Sarah Backus became the target of a backlash following her ruling Monday that prosecutors failed to show the defendants, arrested at the compound on suspicion of training 11 children to use firearms for an anti-government mission, posed a threat to the community, instead ruling that they were entitled to be released on bail pending trial.

“One caller told a court staffer that he wished someone would come and smash the judge’s head. Another caller said that her throat would be slit,” Barry Massey, spokesman for the New Mexico Administrative Office of Courts, told ABC News on Wednesday. “Then there were other calls that threatened violence against all the staff in the courthouse.”

By Tuesday afternoon, the staff at the Taos County courthouse where Backus works had received roughly 200 angry phone calls and emails blasting her decision, Massey said.

Massey said the threats against Backus and the entire staff of the courthouse in Taos, New Mexico, prompted the sheriff’s department to lock down the courthouse for several hours on Tuesday afternoon. (Read more from “Judge Now Receiving Death Threats Over Muslim Compound Ruling” HERE)

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