BOSTON (AP/WHDH) — A Rhode Island man sentenced to 15 years in prison for participating in a plot to behead a blogger on behalf of the Islamic State group was granted an early release because of the coronavirus pandemic, a federal judge ruled.
The judge ordered Nicholas Rovinski’s be released after his lawyers argued that Rovinski’s medical conditions, including cerebral palsy and hypertension, make the 29-year-old particularly vulnerable to serious illness from the virus.
“The Court concludes that there exist extraordinary and compelling circumstances that warrant granting this motion for compassionate release,” U.S. District Judge William Young wrote in his order.
The judge reduced Rovinki’s sentence to time served and ordered him to spent the next 10 years in home confinement with electronic monitoring, with the first six months in “strict home confinement.” Young denied prosecutors request Thursday to delay Rovinski’s release for 30 days while they decide whether to appeal.
Rovinski was previously supposed to be released in 2028. His attorney, William Fick, declined to comment on Thursday.
Rovinski was sentenced in 2017 after pleading guilty to conspiracy for his role in the plot to kill Pamela Geller, who organized a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, in 2015. Rovinski testified against David Wright, who prosecutors described as the mastermind of the plot.
The cartoon contest Geller organized ended in gunfire, with two Muslim gunmen shot to death by police. The plot to behead Geller was never carried out. Instead, Wright’s uncle Ussamah Rahim told Wright on a recorded phone call that he decided to go after “those boys in blue,” referring to police. Hours later, Rahim was fatally shot by authorities after he lunged at them with a knife when they approached him in Boston.
Wright was sentenced to 28 years in prison but is scheduled to be resentenced next month after an appeals court overturned one of his convictions.
Geller said releasing Rovinski “sends the message to thousands of others like him that they can plot freely to murder those who say things that offend their evil ideology, and the consequences will be slight.”
In an article on her website, Geller added, “If Nicholas Rovinski participates in another plot to kill me, will Judge William Young be prosecuted?”
Geller went on to say, “Young’s ridiculous ruling demonstrates yet again that our justice system today heavily favors perpetrators over their victims and prospective victims, as we see the wholesale freeing of prisoners supposedly because of the coronavirus pandemic.”
Rovinski’s attorneys described him in court documents as a “uniquely vulnerable young man” who for a period of time embraced a violent extremist ideology but “never came close to causing or participating in any actual violence” and was “uniquely ill-equipped ever to do so.”
“It is unspeakably tragic that the disabilities that first rendered Mr. Rovinski vulnerable to the odious siren song of his co-conspirators now also expose him to severe illness and death while he serves the extremely harsh sentence that the law required this Court to impose,” his lawyers wrote.
Prosecutors urged the judge to reconsider, saying the release of a man “convicted of serious terrorism offenses after he has served only one-third of his sentence” is an outcome “most would find hard to fathom under the circumstances, especially in the absence of any concrete rationale for the result.”
“We disagree with the Court’s decision to now nullify that sentence – after only five years – based on COVID concerns,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in an emailed statement. “We realize that Rovinski has certain medical issues, but this does not justify releasing to ‘home confinement’ – after serving a mere third of his sentence – someone who willfully conspired to kill people for ISIS,” he said.
Rovinski was freed from prion on Aug. 13.
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