North Carolina pipe bomber will receive a new sentence, Fourth Circuit decides

RALEIGH, N.C. (CN) — A North Carolina pipe bomber succeeded in his request for a new sentence, following a Tuesday ruling from a Fourth Circuit panel that there were procedural errors in a previous resentencing.

Stephan Bullis, now 59, tried to kill his wife in 1995 by mailing a bomb to her workplace in Raleigh, hoping to collect her life insurance policy. The bomb exploded in her hand, severely injuring her and a coworker. Bullis also mailed another bomb, which was discovered in a defunct USPS collection bin in a major mall and defused before it made it to its destination.

Bullis was convicted in February 1996, and sentenced to consecutive terms of 30 years and 235 months. Two of his charges were vacated in September 2022 after they ceased to be classified as crimes of violence, and only four charges remained, until he was resentenced in February 2023, and had an additional 10 years added to his sentence.

This resentencing, Bullis argued, violated the double jeopardy clause in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which prevents anyone from being prosecuted twice for the same crime. It also imposed additional limitations post-release that were not fully detailed when he was sentenced.

The government arguedthat Bullis was not done serving the sentence for his crimes when he was resentenced, and that his charges were unified, and therefore could not violate double jeopardy.

The three-judge panel sided with the government’s interpretation of double jeopardy in their opinion Tuesday, but remanded his case for resentencing anyway, finding the Eastern District of North Carolina failed to clearly explain the requirements of Bullis’ supervised release.

Bullis had not completed serving his time for either of his sentence packages, U.S. Circuit Judge Nicole Berner wrote, and therefore the lower court was well within their rights to resentence him, and did not violate his double jeopardy rights.

“We find that the district court did not err in resentencing Bullis on these counts, and therefore our plain error review ends on the first prong,” the Joe Biden nominee said.

During sentencing, Bullis was told he would be subject to certain warrantless search conditions during supervised release, including of his person and his possessions. The lower court did not announce that his “effects” would also be subject to search, but it was included in the written conditions. During oral arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kate Englander argued on behalf of the government that the oral and written requirements did not differ in a notable way.

But the requirements announced during his sentencing were narrower, and did not include all of Bullis’ property, while the written judgment includes a broader search category, decided the panel Tuesday.

“The district court’s oral pronouncement was ambiguous,” Berner said. “Did the district court mean to impose as specific conditions the series of admonishments it pronounced orally to Bullis or the Standard Conditions of Supervision as adopted in the Eastern District of North Carolina? Because the right to hear the entirety of one’s sentence is ‘fundamental,’ district courts must be clear when orally incorporating a written list of proposed terms. That did not happen here.”

Because the written judgment includes the right to search Bullis’ effects, which wasn’t explained to Bullis at sentencing, his remedy is receiving a full resentencing, Berner wrote. She was joined by U.S. Circuit Judge Robert Bruce King and DeAndrea Gist Benjamin, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden nominees, respectively.

The panel unanimously vacated Bullis’ sentence and remanded his case back to the Eastern District of North Carolina.

Bullis was expected to be released at the end of September in 2027. He has served almost 30 years in prison.

Bullis’ attorney Eric Brignac and representatives for the Eastern District of North Carolina’s U.S. Attorney’s Office did not reply to a request for comment.

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