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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Judges Ask to Revisit Super Bowl Murder Plot

(CN) - A full panel of 9th Circuit will reconsider the acquittal of an Arizona man who plotted a mass-killing of fans at the 2008 Super Bowl but backed out at the last minute.

Kurt Havelock planned to randomly shoot people as they entered the stadium in Glendale, Ariz., but he changed his mind in the stadium's parking lot and later turned himself in. He had outlined his plot, and the reasons for it, in a manifesto sent to major media outlets and two websites before the game.

Havelock was convicted for mailing threatening communications and sentenced to a year in prison plus additional time on probation.

On appeal he argued that his convictions and sentence should be overturned because the packets were addressed to corporations, not to specific people.

A divided three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based federal appeals court agreed and acquitted him of all six counts in 2010.

"Because none of the six packets of which Havelock was convicted of mailing was addressed on its cover to any natural person, his convictions cannot stand," Judge William Canby, Jr. wrote for the panel.

On Monday, the appeals court voted to reconsider that decision before an en banc panel of judges.

The manifesto Havelock mailed to media outlets contained explicit details about his planned massacre: "It will be swift and bloody. I will sacrifice your children upon the altar of your excess," he wrote, along with, "I will slay your children. I will shed the blood of the innocent."

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