While serving time in a federal penitentiary for threatening the life of President Reagan, Rodney Hamrick managed to build five crude bombs and mail one of them to the U.S. Attorney who had prosecuted him. The bomb fizzled and burned the envelope, but luckily did not go off. Hamrick was convicted of a bomb count by a federal district court, but the decision was overruled by an appeals court. Since the bomb was so crudely constructed, the three-judge panel reasoned, it was not a dangerous weapon.

†