press release<\/a>. According to the release, the decision follows a two-day trial and a single hour of deliberation from the jury.<\/p>\nDonald Ray McCray, 67, was convicted of sending mail threatening communications to several U.S. district court judges in the Northern District of Texas and the Eastern District of New York. <\/p>\n
Additionally, McCray was convicted on one count of sending hoax biological weapons to the Texas Federal Courthouse in Fort Worth.<\/p>\n
“Threats and disruptions to the orderly functioning of our federal courts will not be tolerated,” said Ryan Raybould, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas. “And anyone who threatens a NDTX federal judge or NDTX employee will be prosecuted to the fullest extend of the law.”<\/p>\n
He continued, “With this verdict, North Texas residents held the defendant accountable for his threats and attempts to undermine our judiciary.”<\/p>\n
McCray sent the threatening letters containing white powder to the clerk of courts at the Fort Worth and Amarillo federal courthouses in March 2025 while incarcerated at a Texas state prison, according to evidence presented at trial.<\/p>\n
In the letters, McCray threatened the lives of multiple state and federal government employees, including district court judges. After being indicted last summer, McCray appeared at a hearing in federal court and made further threats against government employees and district court judges.<\/p>\n
McCray’s sentencing is set for August and will be decided by U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr, who presided over the trial. McCray faces a potential 10 years in federal prison on each count of mailing threatening communications and up to five years in federal prison for the hoax biological weapons conviction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Dallas federal jury convicted a man of three counts of mailing threatening communications and hoax biological weapons…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-253740","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-headlines","10":"tag-dallas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}