A Pa. man was convicted of threatening to execute federal judges in front of the Liberty Bell — and to broadcast the killings on YouTube

A Pennsylvania man was found guilty Wednesday of threatening to have federal and state judges and other court employees executed — by snipers, by militia members, or in public beheadings, some of which he said should take place in front of the Liberty Bell and be broadcast on YouTube.

Keith Thomas Dougherty, 69, made those threats in letters he mailed to employees at Philadelphia’s federal courthouse in 2023 and 2024, authorities said. And Dougherty sent one of the letters from federal prison while he was incarcerated for making similar threats against different federal judges a few years earlier.

During trial in federal court this week — at which Dougherty faced charges including threatening a federal judge and mailing threatening communications — prosecutors said Dougherty was a litigious person who frequently filed lawsuits and became irate when rulings didn’t go his way.

In cryptic, meandering letters sent to the courts, he would dispute the grounds by which his legal arguments were rejected and, in some, would use crude, violent, and chilling language about the fatal consequences that should befall the judges who ruled against him.

“If you didn’t heed Mr. Dougherty’s warning,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph LaBar told jurors, “apparently you were in considerable trouble.”

Dougherty represented himself during the trial and also testified, often quickly delving deep into legal and procedural matters or seeking to raise issues related to court documents he filed more than a decade ago. At times he briefly acknowledged having sent threatening letters, but sought to raise what he viewed as justifications for them, including that he believed the letters were filed under seal, or that he mailed them to a court office instead of a specific individual.

While being cross-examined by LaBar, Dougherty also said he included the alarming language — which he believed was legally justified — to catch the attention of government lawyers who may have seen it.

Court officials, including several judges, testified and were more direct about the fear they felt after receiving Dougherty’s letters.

“I was very disturbed,” said Patricia Dodszuweit, the clerk of court for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, who received one of the documents. “The hairs on the back of my neck went up.”

Colm Connolly, the chief judge for the U.S. District Court in Delaware, who was listed as a potential sniper target in 2023 and who presided over Dougherty’s previous criminal case, called Dougherty “perplexing.”

“At times he’s very respectful,” Connolly testified. “But then he would say and write these things that cannot be tolerated.”

Dougherty’s travails in criminal court began in 2019, when federal prosecutors in Harrisburg charged him with sending a letter to the region’s chief federal judge threatening to kill other judges by bashing in their skulls or using “ISIS style beheading.” Dougherty later emailed an FBI agent saying he wanted another judge shot in the head by a sniper “to shut her up,” court documents said.

Dougherty sent those letters because he was upset that civil cases he had filed nearly a decade earlier were not going his way, prosecutors said. He was found guilty in 2021 of mailing threatening communications and interstate communications with threat to injure, and Connolly later sentenced him to 41 months in prison.

In 2023, after Dougherty was released, prosecutors said, he began sending similarly threatening letters to officials at Philadelphia’s federal courthouse.

In one of them, according to documents displayed at the trial, Dougherty said a militia he founded was seeking “official authority” to “‘Lawfully’ order the [Public] Execution of now at minimum of (5) Judges,” then listed his targets by name.

In another, he wrote: “Math Logic says ‘go to the clerks office’[and choke them to death]’if they refuse to enter default’???”

A few months after sending those letters, Dougherty was sent back to jail for violating the terms of his supervised release for his 2021 conviction. But he was undeterred.

While still behind bars in March 2024, prosecutors said, he sent a letter to the courts saying, among other things, that judges should be executed “in Front of the Liberty Bell ‘broadcast World Wide via YouTube like Hamas … for maximum effect.”

He was indicted in July 2024.

Now that he’s been convicted again, Dougherty faces the prospect of another lengthy prison sentence at a future sentencing hearing, which was not immediately scheduled.

U.S. District Judge Gerald McHugh, who presided over the trial, did not comment substantively on the testimony or evidence.

But he did occasionally make clear that his patience was being tested by Dougherty’s frequent — and sometimes lengthy — detours toward issues seemingly unconnected to the death threats at the center of the case.

“Mr. Dougherty,” he said at one point, “I’m totally lost.”