Va. man charged with threatening official cleared

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A Vietnamese immigrant who sent his congressman a bloodstained letter vowing to decapitate a U.S. consular official was acquitted of two charges Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Robert Payne ruled that prosecutors failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Phuong Nguyen Le of Richmond really intended to harm U.S. Consular Chief Charles Bennett in Ho Chi Minh City.

Le, 50, last year mailed a letter to the Richmond office of U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott threatening to cut off Bennett’s head. Le was angry because a visa application for his wife in Vietnam was rejected, and Bennett’s letter informing him of the decision suggested the marriage was a sham.

The letter also threatened a massacre worse than the Virginia Tech shootings. The typewritten page was heavily smeared with Le’s blood, which he also used to sign his name.

Payne said he was persuaded by a psychiatrist’s testimony that in Vietnamese culture, the decapitation remark would be viewed as an insult, not a threat. Dr. Paul K. Leung, psychiatry director at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, also said blood-signing is intended to convey a letter’s seriousness and truthfulness.

Le’s lawyer, Amy Austin of the federal public defender’s office, said her client’s drunkenness and poor grasp of the English language resulted in the unfortunate choice of words.

“This is a case in which the concept of reasonable doubt truly makes a difference,” Payne said, citing testimony that “language about head-cutting can be and is a euphemism” in Vietnamese culture.

Payne found Le not guilty of threatening a federal official and using the U.S. mail to do so, but he warned Le that he would no longer be allowed to use cultural or language barriers as an excuse for improper behavior.

“You have opened your mouth in a way that is utterly unacceptable in the United States,” Payne said. “Your letter-writing days better be over.”

He encouraged Le to seek mental health treatment.

While language and cultural differences helped explain the beheading remark and the blood-signing, even the defense had trouble justifying the threat to orchestrate a Virginia Tech-like massacre.

“Now that is troubling to me when I read it,” said Leung, the expert witness for the defense. “I think that is a threat.”

However, that threat could not be considered an element of the charge against Le because it was not aimed directly at Bennett, the judge ruled.

Le earlier this year pleaded guilty to the mailing charge, but Payne later allowed him to withdraw the plea and go to trial. The acquittal meant Le, a former maintenance man at a Richmond housing project, was allowed to go free after nearly a year in jail.

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