Man Who Asked White Supremacist to Kill Judge Gets 60 Years

A career criminal who plotted to kill a prosecutor and attempted to hire a white supremacist to kill a federal judge in Florida was sentenced Monday to 60 years in prison.

Robert Eugene Spiker, 45, previously convicted of rape and robbery, offered to recruit for a white supremacist gang and be its “enforcer” if one of its members would kill U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas E. Morris, court documents say.

Spiker also plotted to stab Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Devereaux during a courtroom hearing and, when that was foiled, attempted to hire a hit man who actually was an undercover police officer, the documents say.

Spiker targeted the judge and prosecutor because they were assigned to handle federal perjury charges brought against Spiker. The perjury charges came after Spiker, serving 15 years in prison for burglary, filed multiple federal civil rights complaints accusing guards of assault and inadequate medical treatment, court documents say.

Spiker used his own blood to write a murder-for-hire contract on the judge and threatened to “ice and dice” Devereaux during a courtroom ruse that was foiled when security personnel found a homemade knife. Spiker intended to have his defense attorney ask Devereaux over to the defense table to apologize for threatening the prosecutor. Spiker planned to stab Devereaux when he got close.

At a sentencing hearing, the prosecutor appeared as a victim, telling the sentencing judge, “I would have gone over to the table and very well likely may not be here today,” the Florida Times Union reported in today’s editions.

Devereaux, occasionally looking at Spiker in the courtroom, called the career criminal a dangerous man incapable of being rehabilitated, and he asked the judge to impose the maximum sentence, the newspaper reported.

“I ask the court that I never see him as long as I'm alive,” Devereaux said.

Spiker, shackled and wearing an orange jail jump suit, expressed no remorse and later told U.S. District Judge Mark Walker that he was worried about an impacted tooth, the newspaper reported.

The white supremacist Spiker attempted to hire to kill the judge isn’t identified in publicly court records, but a one document says the plot to murder the judge came to light in April 2013, a month after he plotted to murder the prosecutor.

“Spiker informed an inmate of his desire to murder Magistrate Judge Morris, and asked for the inmate to assist him in hiring someone to murder the judge,” the document says.

After that unidentified inmate gave Spiker that name of a white supremacist, “Spiker wrote three letters to this individual, soliciting him to murder Magistrate Judge Morris.”

“In payment for the murder, Defendant Spiker offered to carry out an act of violence within the prison system, as well as recruit members for the white supremacist organization,” the document says. In one letter, Spiker directed the white supremacist “to put so many holes in Morris he looks like Swiss cheese and if his family gets in the way so be it.”

Defendant Spiker stated that he wanted to kill Judge Morris on account of the performance of his official duties.

Rather than go to trial on five charges outlined in an indictment against him, Spiker pleaded guilty on Jan. 22 to two counts of soliciting a crime of violence and a third count of attempted murder. The judge sentenced Spiker to 20 years on each count, ordering that the sentences be served consecutively.