Former DOE employee sentenced to prison for hate crime

Lisa Snedeker

Friday, Sept. 1, 2000 | 4:08 a.m.

LAS VEGAS - A federal judge on Friday sentenced a former Energy Department employee to five months in prison for using the U.S. Postal Service to send threatening letters to his former neighbor.

After his prison term, David Hippensteel will be on house arrest for five months. He could have received the maximum prison sentence for hate crimes - five years. He was also fined $100 and sentenced to three years probation.

A grand jury indicted Hippensteel in March on one felony count of sending threatening letters to Ann Byers and her family. He pleaded guilty in May and later resigned from his job as a geophysicist with the DOE's Nevada Operations Office.

Hippensteel, whose mother died Thursday night, broke down when he told U.S. Magistrate Roger Hunt that he was "very sorry for what I did to the Byers' family. I can't imagine the pain I put them through."

He added that he is undergoing mental health counseling. "I need to make sure it never happens again," Hippensteel said.

Jeffery Shaner, Hippensteel's attorney, told the judge that Hippensteel was on the verge of what could be compared to a nervous breakdown when he wrote the letters.

Shaner described his client's actions as uncharacteristic. He did not say what prompted Hippensteel, who has no prior criminal record, to send the letters.

Hippensteel sent at least 12 letters to Byers and her interracial family. The letters included racial epithets, derogatory sexual comments and threats to harm the family, according to the court file. Hippensteel also threatened to plant a pipe bomb at the Byers' home and to kill Byers' husband, who is black.

Hippensteel has since moved to Milwaukee, Wis., with his wife and two children.