A New Bethlehem man with a history of threatening court personnel, civilians, and law enforcement officials was sentenced last week in Clarion County in connection with multiple cases.
Joseph David Supik, 30, had entered a guilty but mentally ill plea to eight misdemeanor counts of terroristic threats with intent to terrorize another person.
Because District Attorney Drew Welsh was one of the people who Supik threatened, attorney Patrick Schutte of the state Attorney General’s Office prosecuted one case.
Schutte said the prosecution of Supik had become “a full-time job” for him. “He has terrorized people across western Pennsylvania from state prison,” Schutte said.
Welsh said it might be easy to “gloss over” the number of people threatened and to “roll with it”, but that should not “diminish the threats.”
Roberts said the system had failed Supik and had not provided him with services and treatment.
“My client has an uncontrollable urge to send letters,” said Roberts. He said the Department of Corrections had suspended Supik’s mail privileges but that he began sending letters again as soon as the suspension was lifted.
Roberts asked that Supik’s sentences run concurrently instead of consecutively, but Judge Sara Seidle-Patton disagreed. She sentenced Supik to serve one to two years in prison consecutively on five of the charges for an aggregate sentence of five to 10 years.
On the remaining three counts, Seidle-Patton sentenced Supik to serve one to two years on each count that will run concurrently with the other sentences.
Prior to sentencing, Seidle-Patton said she was very concerned if these were empty threats or if Supik would carry out the threats if he had the opportunity.
She also ordered Supik to be treated for his mental disorder by the state Department of Corrections.
The charges against Supik in Clarion County stemmed from several letters Supik sent in August 2020, according to court documents.
District Judge Duane Quinn received two letters from Supik that month. One stated Quinn would be a “dead judge soon”, and Supik reportedly made a statement in the other letter about “taking your (Quinn’s) head and using it as a bowling ball,” according to court documents.
Clarion Borough police also received a letter in August 2020 addressed to police chief William Peck in which Supik reportedly said he would put Welsh “six feet under ground,” the court documents said.
A county corrections officer received a letter at the jail from Supik making threats against Welsh. In the same letter, Supik also made a threat against an FBI agent from the Pittsburgh office as he threatened to have the Federal Building “dropped to the ground with 30 lbs of C4 plots,” the court documents say.
Supik said in yet another letter he would pound Welsh “60 feet into the hard deep soil ground.” He also threatened to “blow” the district attorney’s office with “30 lbs of C4 plots,” according to the documents.
Supik has a history of similar expletive-laden threatening letters toward officials in Jefferson, Clarion, and Forest counties. He is serving six to 12 months confinement on each of three previous misdemeanor terroristic threats charges related to previous cases in Clarion County.
He was also sentenced in June 2020 in Jefferson County to an additional one to two years of confinement on one misdemeanor count of terroristic threats, and he was sentenced last year in Centre County to three to 12 months confinement on one misdemeanor count of terroristic threats.
New charges were filed recently against Supik for threatening Jefferson County President Judge John Foradora.