A jury in Easton, Pennsylvania has convicted a man of stalking his probation officer, which could send him to prison for the better part of the next fifteen years. The jury in Northampton County handed down a guilty verdict to Clinton Oxford on charges of harassment, stalking, and making terroristic threats.
Sponsored School(s)
The judge hearing the case subsequently sentenced him to 5 1/5 to 15 years in state prison, which was the maximum allowable sentence for the charges involved in Oxford’s case. But he will also serve more than four additional years in prison for parole violations that he committed in conjunction with the other charges. Oxford made the threats and committed the harassing behavior while he was on parole.
Probation officer Jennifer Dodwell received several emails from Oxford containing explicit and graphic threats on her life. According to the prosecution, the emails contained “increasingly ominous” content that was of both a threatening and a harassing nature and which used graphically violent imagery.
Mixed in with the threats and harassment were strange expressions of love for Dodwell, which prosecutors say he was just as serious and adamant about as he was the threats he was making. The sentences call for eligibility for parole after about ten years.
The jury deliberated for just over an hour before reaching the guilty verdict. District Attorney John Morganelli told reporters that the verdict in particular and the entire case in general sends a message to convicts that probation officers are a priority to the state of Pennsylvania and they will be protected by the agents of the legal system.
During the court proceedings, Oxford’s public defender was sternly reprimanded by the judge for remarks that were made during closing arguments. The remarks suggested that the kind of treatment Dodwell recieved was just part of a a probation officer’s job.