Sentencing in Explosion Threat Halted

Mich. Man Declines To Rule Out Repeat Of 5-Hour Standoff

A Michigan man who threatened to blow up his van near the White House two days before President Bush's second inauguration stunned a court yesterday by saying he couldn't promise that he wouldn't do it again.

Lowell W. Timmers made the remarks as he was about to be sentenced for making false threats in a Jan. 18 standoff with police that lasted nearly five hours. He has admitted that he parked his van near the White House and pretended that he was going to blow up some gas canisters. It was his way, he said, of protesting his son-in-law's arrest on immigration charges.

The hearing was supposed to be uneventful: Timmers, 54, pleaded guilty in March, and his plea agreement called for a likely 34-month prison term. But when U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan asked a routine question about whether he had learned his lesson, the proceedings went awry.

"What are the chances of you doing this again?" the judge asked.

Timmers -- dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, his long, white hair flowing down his back -- paused a moment before speaking up.

"There's always a chance of anything, Your Honor," he said.

The judge's jaw dropped. He pressed Timmers to be clear.

"The odds of that happening are 800 million billion to one," Timmers said, "but I can't ever rule anything out completely, Sir."

Sullivan, who has heard thousands of cases in more than two decades on the bench, said he was "astonished." "I don't think in my entire judicial career anyone's ever told me, 'Yeah, I might do this again.' "

"I didn't mean to upset you," Timmers told the judge at one point.

Defense attorney Tony Axam of the Federal Public Defender's Office tried to explain that Timmers, a self-employed woodcutter, is a "deeply, deeply philosophical person" -- for whom there were no absolutes.

"If you asked him if anything is absolute in this world," Axam said, "he may tell you he's not sure he's standing here."