McDavid was freed on Thursday after nearly nine years in custody, with prosecutors admitting they hid thousands of pages of evidence from McDavid’s attorneys during his trial in 2007. Without those documents, McDavid would go on to be convicted of plotting to bomb several structures in the Sacramento area, including the Nimbus Dam (pictured above), and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The government’s case against McDavid largely hinged on the work of a paid FBI informant, identified only as “Anna.” After meeting McDavid in 2004 in Iowa, the woman urged him to take action against government targets, with promises that they would later consummate a romantic relationship, The Sacramento Bee reports.
The FBI also enabled her to provide McDavid and two co-defendants with money, food, transportation, and housing over an 18-month period.
— Ⓐ #GrumpyCuntSec Ⓐ (@brazenqueer) January 9, 2015
Defense attorneys argued that the evidence showed that Anna and the FBI entrapped McDavid and the co-defendants, who they say were environmental activists who were wrongly targeted by investigators.
Meanwhile, prosecutors sensationalized the damage of the attacks McDavid was accused of plotting.
According to a May 2008 profile of the case in Elle magazine, U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott claimed that damage to the dam would have made “what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina look like a Sunday pancake breakfast.” In that same piece, Jeff McCracken, a spokesperson for the dam, said the water would just “trickle.”
Months after McDavid’s conviction, one juror told Elle magazine that the FBI was an “embarrassment” and she hoped he got a retrial. She said she was upset with the guilty verdicts, but added that she and her fellow jurors were “tired” at the close of the 10-day trial and “wanted to go home.”
Mark Reichel, one of McDavid’s attorneys, does not know where “Anna” is today, but he has some hopes for her: “I hope she’s not ruining someone else’s innocent life,” he told the Sacramento Bee.
U.S. District Judge Morrison C. England Jr., who originally sentenced McDavid to prison years ago, was incredulous in the courtroom on Thursday.
“I’ve never heard or seen of anything like this,” England said, according to The Sacramento Bee. “I sat through the 10-day trial of Mr. McDavid. I know he’s not necessarily a choirboy, but he doesn’t deserve to go through this, either. It’s not fair.”
Despite the government’s admitted corruption, McDavid was still forced to suffer the indignation of pleading guilty to a conspiracy charge. That count carried a maximum sentence of five years, and McDavid was released after the judge granted him credit for time served.
