Woman gets 5 years in prison for threatening judge who had ruled to limit abortion pill access

By Nate Raymond

Sept 30 (Reuters) - A California woman was sentenced on Tuesday to five years in prison after she pleaded guilty to threatening to injure a federal judge in Texas, warning him to "watch his back," after he made a ruling, which was later reversed, to suspend the approval of the abortion pill mifepristone in 2023.

U.S. District Judge Ada Brown imposed the maximum sentence possible on Dolly Kay Patterson under a plea deal she struck in May to resolve charges related to a threat that, according to court papers, was directed at U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo.

Christy Drake, a lawyer for Patterson, in a statement called the sentence "excessive." She said her client had accepted responsibility for her conduct and "has had an otherwise law abiding life."

Lawyers for Patterson, a retired Stanford University employee, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Concerns have been rising about threats facing judges nationally. The U.S. Marshals Service says that as of Sept. 15, it logged 543 threats against 380 federal judges in the 2025 fiscal year.

According to court papers, Patterson on April 16, 2023, sent a message through an online form on the district court's website stating: "Tell this antiabortion judge he needs to watch his back - and that of his kids - the rest of his life!"

That message was sent a little over a week after Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by Republican President Donald Trump, suspended the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's two-decade-old approval of mifepristone.

The U.S. Supreme Court later in June 2024 overturned an appeals court's decision that had partially upheld Kacsmaryk's ruling, preserving, for now, access to a medication used in more than 60% of U.S. abortions.

During a hearing in March 2023, Kacsmaryk, a former Christian legal activist, said his division had received a "barrage" of death threats, and harassing phone calls and voicemails since the abortion pill case began.

A Florida woman, Alice Marie Pence, was last year sentenced to 10 months in prison for also threatening Kacsmaryk.

The case is U.S. v. Patterson, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, No. 2:24-cr-00070.

For the United States: Kelly Weller of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas

For Patterson: Paul Herrmann of The Herrmann and Archer Law Firm and Christy Drake

Read more:

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