(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A Michigan judge handed down the final sentences in the three-year saga stemming from an alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer—giving defendant Shawn Fix a minimum of three years imprisonment and Brian Higgins three years probation, according to local news site UpLive North.
Fix and Higgins both pled guilty earlier this year to providing material support for terrorism. Their co-defendants who went to trial were all exonerated in September.
As Headline USA reported last week, Higgins attempted to kill himself at least six times in jail before he pled guilty and was released in March.
“While pending trial, the prosecution learned from Antrim County Sheriff Daniel Bean that Defendant Higgins had attempted suicide at least six times while he was incarcerated in Antrim County by trying to drown himself in the toilet and by wrapping a towel around his neck to strangle himself,” Michigan prosecutors said in their Nov. 28 filing.
Higgins’s “crime” was participating in a “night-time surveillance” car ride to Whitmer’s home on Sept. 12, 2020.
While all the sentences have been rendered in the Whitmer case, the five men convicted in the plot still have appeals pending.
Those men face uphill battles in their appeals, due in large part to the fact that they were sent to federal prisons outside of Michigan—where they’ve been having difficulty communicating with lawyers or reviewing records about their cases.
Two of the men convicted in the federal case, Adam Fox and Barry Croft, were transferred to supermax facilities, while three men convicted in a state trial last year were also sent to out-of-state facilities.
Fox and Croft have both filed their appeals, and the Justice Department has until Dec. 13 to reply. The men from the state trial all have appeal deadlines looming this month.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
