A Connecticut man who admitted that he threatened to kill the federal judge and other officials in Maine who worked on his sexual abuse case was sentenced Tuesday to 18 months in prison.
Devin James Melycher will serve the sentence after he serves a first prison sentence of 11 years that he drew for traveling to Maine to engage in sexual contact with a 13-year-old girl in 2020.
While that case was pending, Melycher, 30, of Brookfield, Connecticut, sent more than 100 threatening letters to several federal officials, including U.S. District Judge John Woodcock; Federal Defender David Beneman, who represented Melycher until the defendant fired him; Assistant U.S. Attorney Noah Falk, who prosecuted the case; and Eric Tracy, an agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who investigated the sex case with the Gorham police.
Melycher was indicted in September — after he received his 11-year prison sentence — on three counts of mailing threatening communications, two counts of threatening to murder a federal judge and one count of threatening to murder a federal law enforcement officer.
Acting as his own attorney, he pleaded guilty to the charges last month and asked for an expedited sentencing date. Federal prosecutors recommended Melycher be incarcerated for four years and three months for making the threats. Information on how much prison time Melycher asked for was not immediately available following his sentencing.
After he was charged with making the threats, the case was reassigned to U.S. District Judge Paul J. Barbadoro and the U.S. attorney’s office in Concord, New Hampshire. While the threat case has been pending, Melycher has continued to make threats against those handling his case in the Granite State, according to federal prosecutors.
Melycher sent the threatening letters while his original case was pending between May and August of this year.
“Generally speaking, over the course of his pretrial detention, the defendant’s letters have gone from plaintive and pleading, to desperate to, more recently, violent and threatening,” Falk said in his sentencing memorandum in the sex case.
The threats in the letters appeared to grow more violent after Melycher pleaded guilty to the sex charge on June 1.
A week later, the court received a profanity-laced letter that said: “I swear to god you better f——— kill me Woodcock. I’m going to f——— murder you one day and you deserve it.” In other letters, Melycher told the judge to “go hang himself.”
In spite of the threats, Woodcock and Falk declined to recuse themselves from the sex case, which stemmed from August 2020, court documents said.
That month, Melycher drove from his residence in Connecticut to Gorham to engage in sexual conduct with the minor victim, for which he paid $85, according to court documents. The trip followed weeks of contact between Melycher and the victim over Snapchat and other chat platforms.
During that time, Melycher pressured the victim to send sexually explicit images despite knowing the victim was only 13, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. Melycher initially told the victim he was 19.
Melycher was arrested on Aug. 2, 2021, in Connecticut. He has been held without bail since then. That time will be applied to his sentences.