Neo-Nazi Activist Gets 40 Years for Arizona Mail Bombing
Notorious racist Dennis Mahon will spend the next 40 years in prison - and likely die behind bars - for sending a mail bomb that exploded in 2004 and injured the diversity officer for Scottsdale, Ariz.
In handing down the sentence Tuesday in Phoenix, U.S. District Judge David Campbell said Mahon, 61, carried out an act of domestic terrorism when he mailed the potentially deadly pipe bomb to the office of Don Logan.
Federal prosecutors asked for a 63-year sentence for the former Ku Klux Klan leader and longtime associate of Tom Metzger, founder of White Aryan Resistance.
Mahon was convicted Feb. 24 of conspiracy to damage buildings and property with explosives; malicious damage of a building by means of explosives; and distribution of information related to explosives. His twin brother, Daniel Mahon, was acquitted on a single federal charge of conspiracy to damage buildings and property.
The pipe bomb was delivered on Feb. 26, 2004, to Don Logan, an African American who was then director of the Office of Diversity and Dialogue for the city of Scottsdale, near Phoenix. The bomb exploded when he opened the package, badly injuring him. Two other employees sustained lesser injuries.
“I wasn’t supposed to survive that attack, but it charted my course that people deserve equal justice, equal treatment,” Logan said in court, according to The Arizona Republic. Logan retired from his Scottsdale job in 2007 and now works in Glendale, Ariz.
The mostly white jury determined the bombing was not a hate crime, and the judge defended that finding at the sentencing hearing.