A 36-year-old man who admitted he had threatened to kill a state court judge and his own defense attorney and to sexually assault a prosecutor has been sentenced to 20 months behind bars, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Vermont.
Josh Puma, formerly of Chittenden County, was sentenced by federal Chief Judge Geoffrey Crawford Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Rutland, according to a press release Friday afternoon from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Puma was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release following his prison term.
The release indicated that Puma had mental health issues and that he had been previously ordered hospitalized by a state court.
“In imposing the 20-month sentence,” the release stated, “Chief Judge Crawford varied downward from the otherwise applicable advisory Federal Sentencing Guidelines in part to recognize Puma’s mental health issues.”
Puma called a Vermont Department of Corrections reporting line hundreds of times between July 2021 and January 2022, according to court records, the release said.
A federal indictment charged Puma in connection with three of those calls in which he threatened to kill a state judge and his own defense attorney and threatened to sexually assault a state prosecutor.
Puma pleaded guilty to all three charges, according to the U.S. Attorney’s press release, which did not identify the targets of the threats.
Court records filed in the case stated that while participating in a state court case against him in 2019, he punched his defense attorney in the face. He was sentenced to four to 12 months in jail after pleading guilty to the assault, the court records stated.
