Author Indicted For Book On How To Kill A Federal Judge

It's a sign of our times that a 72-year-old disgruntled litigant who authored a "book" on how to murder a federal judge was indicted and faces a lengthy prison term.

A notorious book written in 1983 by a recently divorced mother of two.

There is a delicate balance between a book that describes how to do something, and one that constitutes an imminent and serious threat to do something.

Robert Phillip Ivers, 72, wrote a 236-page “book” that he printed at a local library entitled “How to Kill a Federal Judge.” He gave librarians a flier describing the book as a “five-star blood soaked killing guide.” The librarians alerted authorities.

Ivers was recently indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice, which claims the book represents a threat to assault and murder a federal judge and U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Ivers is also charged with the interstate transmission of threats to injure others. He faces a potentially lengthy prison sentence.

Ivers was earlier convicted of threatening a federal judge in 2018 and sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Ivers’s grievance stems from a federal lawsuit he filed against an insurance company that refused to pay him $100,000. U.S. District Judge Wilhelmina Wright of Minnesota summarily dismissed his case. Ivers attempted to refile the claim and was referred to two volunteer attorneys, who told him that Wright’s prior rulings doomed the case.

One of the lawyers told the U.S. Marshals that Ivers responded, "This [expletive] judge stole my life from me" and "stacked the deck" to ensure he lost the case.

The Washington Post reported that Brett Kelley, a lawyer who represented Ivers in prior cases, said much of Ivers book dates back years.

In a statement, Kelley writes, “I am surprised the government decided to charge Mr. Ivers in relation to his book/manifesto. I am not surprised people are extremely offended or disturbed by the content. Aside from some relatively minor changes, the book was a government exhibit in both his 2018 and 2022 cases the latter of which was dismissed.” Kelley said the government “rightly did not charge him in relation to the book in either case because it should not.”

The question may boil down to whether Ivers’s book represents a serious, imminent threat. That seems questionable, given Brett Kelley’s statement that much of the material in Ivers’s book is several years old.

The First Amendment states, "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech." However, the Supreme Court ruled in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) that speech is unprotected “if it intends to incite imminent harm and is likely to produce it.”

Should it be a federal crime to write a book entitled, “How to Kill a Federal Judge”?

Other authors have written books about how to kill people without being indicted, hauled before a federal court judge, and sentenced to years in prison.