DENVER (AP) — A man who left a homemade bomb outside a police station in a Colorado mountain town had his sentence reduced to time served Thursday following a successful appeal.
U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello issued the new sentence for David Ansberry following a re-sentencing hearing, according to court documents.
Ansberry was originally sentenced to 27 years in prison for leaving the device, which did not explode, outside the Nederland police station in 2016. He pleaded guilty to attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against a person or property.
At the time, Arguello sided with the government in treating his actions as a form of terrorism, finding that he was seeking revenge for the town marshal’s killing of a fellow member of a band of hippies after arresting the man in 1971.
But in 2020, a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Ansberry to be re-sentenced. It said Arguello could only add a terrorism sentencing enhancement in re-sentencing Ansberry if she determined the shooting of Ansberry’s friend was official government conduct. It also said said the police officer who first discovered the bomb could not be considered a victim of the crime in determining a sentence.
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