A woman who was found with 24 homemade pipe bombs and a hit list has remarkably avoided prison.
Michelle Kolts pleaded guilty in order to reduce her charges after she was arrested in 2019 for 24 counts of making, possessing, and discharging a destructive device. Instead of serving prison time, 27-year-old Kolts will be receiving mental health treatment.
Florida police found 24 homemade bombs in Kolts' bedroom at her parents' home in October 2019. Alongside the devices - which were filled with nails and screws - were books about terrorist bombings and a hit list.
The charges Kolts was arrested on held a maximum sentence of 100 years, but she was found to be unfit to stand trial following years of mental health evaluations and treatment. Eventually, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, Fox News reported.
Her mental health treatment will include counseling at an in-house facility, and she will not receive a record of a criminal conviction, given that she had a clean record and this was her first-time offense.
Fox 13 reported that Kolts appeared before Tampa judge Leann Goudie and agreed to plead guilty and, in exchange for this plea, prosecutors reduced her 24 charges to just 10.
Lindsey Hodges, one of the prosecutors, told the court that Kolts will have to follow a full course of mental health care, stating that she will be subjected to "24 months of community control followed by 15 years probation."
Kolts' attorney Barry Taracks told reporters: "She's not going to suffer the stigma of a conviction on any of those counts as long as she stays crime-free and abides by the terms of her probation."
Many people have been incensed at the idea that Kolts had the potential to cause significant devastation, but that she won't be receiving prison time. This is, however, the nature of using the defence of insanity in Florida - which uses the M'Naghten rule to determine whether someone is legally insane.
Under this rule, it is up to the defense - in this case, Kolts' team - to establish, by clear and convincing evidence, that she suffered from a mental disease or defect at the time the crime was committed. As such, the defense should prove that Kolts firstly did not know what she was doing or, secondly, did not know it was wrong.
Evidently, the defense was able to demonstrate that Kolts was insane at the time her homemade bombs were discovered, hence why her sentence was reduced significantly, per the Kilfin Law Firm.
