MOBILE, Alabama – After a 90-minute debate over whether Phillip Lee Howell's homemade explosive devices represented a serious attempt to burn down the office supply store where he worked or a prank gone awry, a federal judge today opted for probation.

Under advisory sentencing guidelines, Howell faced a prison term of at least three years and a month, and that is what Assistant U.S. Attorney George May urged the judge to impose.

But U.S. District Judge Ginny Granade, after calling it one of the more unusual cases she has seen, said she did not believe incarceration was appropriate for a variety of reasons. She sentenced the defendant to five years of probation, including the first six months under home confinement with electronic monitoring.

Granade also ordered Howell, 29, to pay OfficeMax $2,344.57 – the cost of hiring a security company to guard two local stores.

The judge said she was moved by testimony that Howell suffers from arteriovenous malformation, an abnormal connection between veins and arteries in his brain. Not only does it appear likely that the condition caused Howell’s strange behavior in March, she said, but she also expressed doubt that the U.S. Bureau of Prisons is equipped to deal with the defendant’s unusual medical problems.

Granade appeared to struggle with the issue. She noted that Howell’s medical condition might make him a risk to place others in danger again.

“It’s a real challenge to know what is a good sentence,” she said.

The judge attempted to address her concerns by requiring that Howell be supervised by a family member at all times.

Defendant claimed 'ill-thought-out joke'

Howell pleaded guilty in August to possession of an unregistered firearm as part of a deal in which an attempted arson charge — which carries a five-year mandatory-minimum prison term — will be dropped.

According to his plea agreement, Howell went to the store on Airport Boulevard and Schillinger Road on March 18 clad in dark shorts, a black T-shirt, a motorcycle helmet and fingerless gloves.

At about 6 p.m., he threw two incendiary devices made out of spray paint cans at the front door. The first was a long wick that was on fire. After briefly walking away from the doors, out of view of a surveillance camera, he threw the second device next to the first one.

The manager of the OfficeMax put out the fire with a fire extinguisher. According to the plea agreement, the automatic doors had just been locked, preventing the devices from going inside.

Howell returned to the store three days later and left another two explosive devices – made out of Coke Zero cans – next to the back of the store. The judge saw pictures of those devices, as well as dead grass where gasoline from the cans had spilled on to the ground.

Mark Sloke, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives agent, testified that the defendant admitted that he had made the bombs and planned to use them but changed his mind after deciding he had used too much gasoline.

Sloke said the defendant told him that the whole incident was an “ill-thought-out joke” that he was playing on a co-worker.

An ATF lab in Atlanta determined that the devices were “improvised incendiary devices,” he said.

“These devices are extremely dangerous. They can cause extensive property damage and injury,” Sloke said. “They can easily cause a fire at any location.”

Charles Curreri, an investigator with the Mobile Fire-Rescue Department, concurred.

“I don’t believe this was a prank,” he testified.

In addition to the unlit devices left outside the store on March 21, the defendant also put threatening sticky notes on the door, Sloke testified. They had messages like, “I will not hurt you unless I have to.”

Sloke testified that Howell was wearing the same disguise he had on during the previous incident three days earlier and had used cloth to cover the license plate of the borrowed truck he was driving.

The agent said the defendant told him he was hiding behind a pillar and planned to jump out and scare a female employee as she came to work.

Sloke said investigators were particularly troubled by what they found during a search warrant of Howell’s home – a gym bag, hidden behind a washing machine and dryer, containing an Iron Man mask, black gloves, a fire-starting instrument and loaded .380-caliber pistol.

“The damage was minimal, but the fear was much more greater,” Sloke said.

Run-in with manager

Fermin Garcia, who was the manager of the OfficeMax store at the time, testified that he had had a run-in with Howell the previous week. He said he insisted on checking cardboard boxes that Howell was carrying out of the store and that he took offense to it.

Garcia testified that the store had a great deal of paper that easily could have caught fire if the locked front doors had not blocked the two homemade bombs from getting inside.

The defendant’s father, local attorney Bill Howell, said sought to assure the judge as an officer of the court that his son was no danger.

“Was this stupid? Yes,” he said. “Did he hurt anybody? Absolutely not.”

The elder Howell said his son’s dream is to teach high school history. “We hope and we pray that he will be given that opportunity, to start a new life,” he said.

The defendant’s mother, Susan Howell, said it is a shame that her son’s brain damage in not in a spot that makes it visible. She said he son is not the person who committed the crime that he did and will not be again.

“He is so well-loved by so many people, and the fact that he could do this is bizarre,” she said. “It’s unbelievable.”

Assistant Federal Defender Chris Knight said his client has had multiple surgeries because of his condition and likely will need another one. The federal prison system is ill-equipped to provide the care that Howell needs or deal with life-or-death seizures that he sometimes suffers.

“This man has a very dangerous time bomb sitting there in his head,” he said.

The prosecutor, however, said Howell’s criminal conduct comprised two different trips to the store and a level of planning that goes beyond a momentary lapse

“It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment incident,” he said. “This is a defendant who caused a lot of fear.”

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