A Cornell student who posted antisemitic murder threats on the university’s Web site — then claimed he only did it to “garner sympathy” for Jewish people — was sentenced to 21 months behind bars Monday.
Patrick Dai, 22, was handed down the judgement by Syracuse federal Chief Judge Brenda Sannes after he copped a plea in April while maintaining he threatened to kill Jews on campus in a misguided bid to highlight the atrocities of Hamas.
Dai’s lawyer, Lisa Peebles, later told The Post by email that she plans to appeal the sentence since she disagrees with how federal sentencing guidelines were interpreted for her client, including involving two increases to his imprisonment range.
She also noted that Dai had already been in jail for nearly 10 months since his November arrest.
“He has more than nine months in the county jail,” Peebles said. “I was hoping for time served.”
The lawyer had asked the judge for more leniency, arguing Dai was diagnosed with autism after the incident — a medical condition she says would explain his crime.
“He believed, wrongly, that the posts would prompt a ‘blowback’ against what he perceived as anti-Israel media coverage and pro-Hamas sentiment on campus,” Peebles wrote in court papers last month. “Patrick’s flawed logic is a result of his autism.”
Prosecutors argued that Dai should receive a sentence within the recommended guideline range, which was 27 to 33 months in prison. Judge Sannes ultimate decision was still slightly below what was recommended.
“The defendant terrorized a campus community for days and horrified the nation at a very volatile time,” prosecutors wrote in sentencing papers last month.
The feds said Dai’s mental-health struggles didn’t give him a free pass to break the law.
“Many people go through periods where they feel isolated and/or depressed and lots of people face mental health challenges,” prosecutors argued in their filling. “Those tests and challenges do not give anyone the right to terrorize their neighbors and classmates.”
Dai — an engineering student and former junior at the Ivy league school — made multiple posts on the university’s Web site just weeks after the Oct. 7 massacre carried out by the Palestinian terror group Hamas in Israel.
On Oct. 28, Dai wrote heinous comments on the site, including, “Jewish people need to be killed,” “gonna bomb jewish house,” and “watch out pig jews. jihad is coming.”
He also said in a post Oct. 29 that he would shoot up a dining hall that caters to Jewish students and kill other Jews with an “assault rifle.”
Later that day, he retracted the comments and issued an apology. He was arrested two days afterward, on Oct. 31.
“The defendant’s threats terrorized the Cornell campus community for days and shattered the communities sense of safety,” said US Attorney Carla Freedman. “My office will continue to aggressively investigate and prosecute threats and acts of violence motivated by antisemitism and by hatred of any kind.”
Peebles previously told The Post that Dai was triggered after he heard comments by a Cornell professor saying he found the Hamas attack “exhilarating.” The comments came around the same time Hamas tried to falsely pin a hospital bombing in Gaza on Israel.
“He was depressed, he struggled with autism, he had not been diagnosed yet, and he had a breakdown and came up with this idea to do these posts,” the lawyer said at the time.
