A Florida man with mental-health disorder gets home confinement for threatening poll workers
A Broward County man convicted of threatening poll workers in last year’s gubernatorial primary election was sentenced Monday to a year and a half of home confinement with electronic monitoring instead of prison time because of his mental-health illness.
Joshua David Lubitz, 39, has been diagnosed with chronic obsessive-compulsive disorder, a key factor that led to his lenient sentence, according to court records.
Lubitz, who lives with his parents in Sunrise, will face supervised release for three years. He is not allowed to visit polling places, may not contact any victims or possess firearms, and must undergo psychological counseling, according to the terms imposed by U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Ruiz.
“Josh is so much more than his diagnosis,” his parents, Robert and Michele Lubitz, wrote to the judge before Monday’s sentencing in Miami federal court. “Joshua has always been a very special and gentle soul. ... To this day, Joshua has never been someone who seeks out any form of confrontation. He would rather walk away from anything unseemly than stay and exacerbate the situation.”
Lubitz was charged with voter intimidation last October after he had threatened election workers who assisted him and other voters at a senior center in Sunrise during the primary election last August.
“Should I kill them one by one or should I blow the place up?” a federal indictment accused Lubitz of saying at the polling station, then he “pointed his finger and thumb in a gun-like fashion towards election workers.”
In May, Lubitz pleaded guilty to voter intimidation, a charge carrying up to five years in prison. During that hearing, Lubitz’s lawyer, Jonathan Friedman, said it was his client’s decision to plead guilty against his advice, arguing “this was a triable case.”
On Monday, Friedman argued for no prison time, providing the judge with a video of what transpired at the Sunrise polling place, a history of Lubitz’s mental-health illness and letters of support from the defendant’s family members.
In a factual statement filed with his plea agreement, prosecutors Harry Wallace and Jeremy Thompson said that if Lubitz had gone to trial, they would have been able to prove he made threats to the election workers. They told FBI agents about his intimidating statements and behavior at the Sunrise polling place on Aug. 17, 2022.
Even after he cast his ballot, the prosecutors said Lubitz, a registered Democrat, continued to act aggressively towards the poll workers.
“After Lubitz voted, the poll deputy who was inside the polling station thanked Lubitz for voting, to which Lubitz uttered an obscenity,” according to the factual statement signed by the defendant. “The poll worker then exited the polling station behind Lubitz to continue to watch him as he went to the parking lot to leave.
“As Lubitz drove past the entrance to the polling site, he extended his arm toward the two poll workers and made a threatening gesture toward them with his hand.”
In the run-up to last fall’s gubernatorial election in Florida, local officials expressed fears about voter intimidation because of the divisive climate of the electorate following the 2020 presidential election in which Democrat Joe Biden unseated GOP President Donald Trump.
Lubitz’s case turned out to be one of the few examples, and it’s unclear from the court record whether politics even played a role in his misconduct.
