A Queens man has pleaded guilty to threatening to choke a federal judge to death during a court appearance last year after the jurist ruled against him in a civil lawsuit.
Kenneth Ward, 59, made his threats in July during a phone conference about a lawsuit he filed in 2015 over his involuntary committal for earlier threats he made against other judges, according to court filings.
In 2019, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Carol Bagley Amon dismissed all but one of the defendants in his suit, a sole Long Island cop, and Ward said during the July conference he wanted to put an end to the case because he and his wife were suffering from cancer.
A different judge was presiding over the July hearing, where Ward seethed and ranted over Amon’s decision, accusing her of ruling against him because she was “corrupt.”
“She was corrupt. I mean come on. She should never let those doctors out of what they did to me,” Ward said during the conference, which was being recorded.
His rant crossed the line toward the end of the hearing, when he said: “So those doctors and that f—ing judge, Carol whatever the f— her name is, can go f— herself. All right? And if I ever see her again, I’m going to choke her to death. And that’s on the f—ing — that’s on the record.”
Ward was arrested in August, and he’s been locked up in the MDC Brooklyn federal jail since then.
After his arrests, prosecutors described him as “a serial pro se litigant with a deeply held resentment for the judicial system and a history of making threats to court personnel following adverse rulings.”
He filed his civil suit after a July 2015 incident at a Department of Veterans Affairs office in Hicksville that landed him in psychiatric treatment for a week. According to Amon’s ruling, Ward walked in complaining about being cheated out of his inheritance, and showed a worker there a sheet of paper with photos the worker believed were judges. Ward then told her, “I am going to take them out one by one.”
He pleaded guilty Monday to a single count of threatening a U.S. judge. Though the maximum sentence is 10 years, he’ll likely face 10 to 16 months based on federal guidelines.
“The judges and other court officials who work every day to keep our country safe and uphold the rule of law should not have to fear for their lives for doing their jobs,” U.S. Attorney John Durham said. “Threatening judges strikes at the very heart of our system.”