Federal Appeals Court orders new sentencing for BTI Building bomber

The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered a new sentencing hearing for the man convicted in the 1995 bombing of the Business Telecom Inc. building in north Raleigh. A unanimous appellate panel agreed that the trial judge failed to follow proper procedure when resentencing Stephen Bullis in 2023.

Yet the court rejected Bullis’ argument that he should not have faced any additional prison time when he was resentenced. He had served more than 27 years in federal prison by that time. The resentencing called for him to spend almost 10 more years in prison, with another five years of supervised release.

“After doubling the payout on his then-wife’s life insurance policy, Bullis built and mailed two improvised explosive packages to her office,” Judge Nicole Berner wrote for the 4th Circuit panel. “Only one of the packages reached its intended destination. Bullis’s then-wife opened that package in her office. The resulting explosion caused her severe and permanent harm. The explosion also substantially damaged the building and caused physical and emotional trauma to several other people in the office.”

Bullis was tried and convicted in June 1996 on six federal charges. His original sentence called for him to spend 235 months behind bars on four of the charges, followed by another 30 years and an additional life sentence for the other two charges.

Rulings in 2019 from the 4th Circuit and US Supreme Court in an unrelated case prompted Bullis to seek to have the last two charges thrown out. US District Judge Louise Wood Flanagan set aside the two convictions. She resentenced Bullis in 2023 to a total of 450 months in prison.

The 4th Circuit rejected Bullis’ argument that he should not have faced a new sentence longer than the 235 months already served on the four remaining counts of his original conviction.

Looking at two precedent cases, the rule for resentencing “can be summarized succinctly,” Berner wrote: “reimposition of a sentence fully served violates the Double Jeopardy Clause, but any component sentence of a consecutive sentence package is not fully served until the aggregate sentence package has been fully served.”

In Bullis’ case, he faced two aggregate sentence “packages.” Both were longer than the 331 months he had served as the time of his resentencing, Berner explained.

While 4th Circuit judges found no problems with the length of Bullis’ new sentence, they took issue with Flanagan’s explanation of the conditions Bullis would face during supervised release after his prison term.

Based on a precedent case from 2020, appellate judges agreed with Bullis that Flanagan’s oral and written sentences did not match properly. Flanagan failed to say in court that Bullis could face law enforcement searches of his “effects,” though that word appeared in the written document covering his release.

“The district court specified only Bullis’s computer, phone, data storage or collection devices, car, house, and person as proper subjects of search. Nothing more,” Berner wrote. “Because the district court’s written judgment contains a search category that is substantially broader than its oral pronouncement, the two materially differ.”

Flanagan also should have incorporated the “standard conditions of supervision” for the Eastern District of North Carolina during Bullis’ sentencing hearing, Berner explained.

“Instead of incorporating the Eastern District of North Carolina’s standard conditions by their name, the district court referenced generally ‘standard conditions in this district,’” Berner wrote. “The district court then admonished Bullis not to engage in a series of vaguely described activities. After conveying this series of admonishments, the district court then stated: ‘Standard conditions you’ll comply with.’”

“The district court’s oral pronouncement was ambiguous,” Berner added.

Bullis’ case heads back to Flanagan for a new resentencing.

Judges Robert Bruce King and DeAndrea Gist Benjamin joined Berner’s opinion.

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