A Rhode Island man sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for threatening to behead a conservative blogger over her anti-ISIS views is the latest con to be set free under the coronavirus compassionate release movement.
Nicholas Rovinski was set free this week after serving just five years of his sentence, with the 29-year-old’s lawyers successfully arguing his cerebral palsy and hypertension make him vulnerable to COVID-19. He was jailed at FCI Danbury, a “low-security” prison in Connecticut.
U.S. Attorney in Boston Andrew Lelling appealed to the court to keep Rovinski behind bars for a crime he stressed could have resulted in a life term. He added 7,000 federal inmates have been let out and sent home during the pandemic.
“The defendant has failed to meet his burden of establishing ‘extraordinary and compelling reasons’ that warrant releasing the defendant after serving barely a third of his 15-year sentence of imprisonment for two extraordinarily serious terrorism offenses that involved plotting the killing of U.S. citizens on behalf of ISIS and for which his sentencing guideline range was at life,” Lelling wrote.
On Thursday, Lelling filed for reconsideration saying, in part, Rovinski was part of “a carefully constructed plan — developed with a co-defendant — to behead a woman in the name of ISIS.”
Boston federal Judge William Young ruled that Rovinski “spend the next ten years of supervised release in home confinement, the first six months of which shall be in strict home confinement.” He can then appeal for leniency.
Lelling said in his appeal that “most would find hard to fathom” the decision to let Rovinski go home.
Rovinski and two others were arrested over a plan to kill blogger Pamela Geller at the behest of ISIS after she organized a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas in 2015.
Rovinski, who pleaded guilty in 2017 to conspiracy charges, testified he and his co-conspirators would talk about ISIS and perhaps joining the terrorist organization. He also read up on saws and chopping tools, the feds said. The plot never got off the ground.
