FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                           May 1, 2007                                                                    WWW.USDOJ.GOV	CRM (202) 514-2008 TDD (202) 514-1888

Former local university student sentenced to two years in prison for sending
e-mail threats to a local judge who was presiding over her civil suit against the university

Washington, D.C. - A former Howard University student, Yeato Prall, 38, of no fixed address, was sentenced to two years in prison today for sending threatening emails to the D.C. Superior Court judge who was presiding over a series of civil cases she had brought against Howard University in 2003 and 2004, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor announced.
Prall, who had been a PhD candidate at Howard until 2002, was sentenced by the Honorable Judge Richard J. Leon in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. On March 15, 2007, Prall pleaded guilty to one count of sending threatening interstate communications. An additional count, and charges of threatening a U.S. official, were dismissed today, after the defendant was sentenced. Prall has been in custody since her arrest in May of 2006.

Prall's threats related to a series of lawsuits Prall had brought against Howard University, including an action for wrongful eviction, after the University determined that she was no longer eligible for campus housing. According to the Statement of Facts filed at the time of the plea, Prall borrowed a computer from a friend, at his apartment in Frederick, Maryland, saying that she was seeking to "work on [her] case," but the same night, she sent an email in May 2006 (using a fictitious "Hotmail" account) to the D.C. Superior Court Judge, threatening to kill him and his family if he did not recuse himself from her lawsuits against Howard. FBI agents traced the email, and seized the computer.

About a week later, after Prall told her friend that the judge likely would get more threats, the judge received a second, similar threat, that was traced back to a computer in the law library of Georgetown University Law Center. This email came from a fictitious account at "Yahoo!" When the FBI searched Prall's purse, pursuant to a warrant, they found slips of paper with the judge's email address, as well as the account information for the fictitious accounts at "Hotmail" and "Yahoo!" In announcing today's sentence, U.S. Attorney Taylor praised the efforts of FBI Special Agent Joseph P. Lowery, Jr., and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Barbara E. Kittay and Perham Gorji, who prosecuted the case.

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