Man pleads guilty to sending ricin-tainted letters

A Mississippi man has pleaded guilty to sending poison-laced letters to President Barack Obama and other officials.

James Everett Dutschke entered the plea yesterday during a hearing in US District Court in Oxford, Mississippi.

The 42-year-old previously pleaded not guilty and denied sending the letters. He also denied a later charge that, while incarcerated, he tried to recruit someone else to send a ricin-tainted letter.

Dutschke has been jailed since April on charges of sending the letters to Obama, Republican US Sen. Roger Wicker, and a Mississippi judge.

The judge was the only one to receive a letter, though she was not harmed. The letters to Obama and Wicker were intercepted.
 

Prosecutors recommended a 25-year sentence. That sentence would run concurrently with any sentence Dutschke would face in state court, where he's facing unrelated fondling charges.