Former Cornell student sentenced to 21 months in prison for posting threats to Jewish students

A former Cornell University student was sentenced Monday to 21 months in prison for posting threats of violence against Jews on campus after the start of the Gaza war last fall. Patrick Day, a resident of suburban Rochester, New York, was charged by federal officials last October with posting anonymous threats to shoot and stab Jews on a student community life forum. The threats came amid a surge in anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim rhetoric related to the war and unnerved Jewish students on the campus in upstate New York. Day pleaded guilty in April to a charge of using interstate communications to post threats to kill or injure another person. In federal court, Judge Brenda Sannes handed down the sentencing decision, sentencing him to 21 months in prison and three years of supervised release, according to federal prosecutors. The judge said Day had “significantly disrupted campus activities” and committed a hate crime, but noted that he has been diagnosed with autism and has suffered from mental health issues, and also mentioned his history of nonviolence, according to the website cnycentral.com. The maximum sentence Day, 22, could have faced was five years in prison. “Every student has the right to seek an education without fear of violence based on who they are, how they look, where they are from or their religion,” Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said in a press release. “Anti-Semitic threats of violence, like the defendant’s vicious and explicit threats, violate that right.” Day’s mother said she believes her son was triggered in part by medication he takes for depression and anxiety. Public defender Lisa Peebles argued that Day is pro-Israel and that the posts were a misguided attempt to rally support for Israel. “He mistakenly believed that the posts would spark a ‘backlash’ to what he viewed as anti-Israel media coverage and pro-Hamas sentiment on campus,” Peebles wrote in a court filing. Patrick Day, a junior at the time of the incident, was suspended from the Ivy League school in Ithaca, New York.