A Bush-appointed federal judge sentenced a firebomber inspired by Hamas terrorists to nearly 20 years in prison in California, plus restitution and supervised release.
Casey Robert Goonan received a terrorism enhancement to his sentence from Senior U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White for committing “a series of arsons and firebombings” at the University of California, Berkeley and an Oakland federal courthouse in June 2024, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Tuesday. Goonan, a PhD graduate, has admitted that the attacks were inspired by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, pleading guilty in January to maliciously damaging or destroying property used in or affecting interstate commerce by means of fire or an explosive.
Goonan placed a bag of six incendiary devices called Molotov cocktails under a University of California Police Department (UCPD) patrol car near UC Berkeley’s campus on June 1, an incident caught on video, the DOJ said. On June 11, he threw rocks at a federal courthouse in the hope of throwing Molotov cocktails inside before federal agents stopped him. He then lit them ablaze at the side of the building.
Additionally, Goonan set three other fires on UC Berkeley’s campus throughout June, prosecutors said. He “called on others to attack property on Bay Area college campuses in support of Palestine,” according to the DOJ.
Goonan’s lawyer, Sarah Potter, did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
The arsonist told Judge White a story in a Sept. 13 letter of his background as a mentally troubled young man who became increasingly political during his college years. He mentioned earning a bachelor’s degree in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside and a PhD in African American studies from Northwestern University.
“During my time as a student, I was introduced to the cause of Palestinian liberation and I became deeply engaged in questions of racial justice, socioeconomic equality, and human rights,” Goonan wrote. “Over the years, I came to believe that as a U.S. citizen, I shared a responsibility for the ways in which the government’s policies and resources contribute to warfare and oppression abroad, especially the situation facing Palestinians.”
Goonan said he has bipolar spectrum disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder and that his mental health began declining amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. He was first arrested in 2023 for “destroying a hotel sign during a protest,” the letter says.
“Having spent over a year in custody, I’ve had time to reflect on my actions more clearly … I recognize the potential harm my actions may have caused for the community and for my family and loved ones, as well as the harm my actions could have caused to the workers and students on campus, and workers in the federal building,” Goonan said about the fire attacks. “It was never my intention to harm people.”
“I am not an arsonist but an activist who in a manic fit of rage and desperation committed arson,” Goonan said.
Potter largely reiterated the story in a Sept. 16 sentencing memo, asking for no more than eight years in prison for her client. She expressed concern that he might not get proper diabetes care in prison.
Aquaintances of Goonan, including several who knew him as an academic, also wrote letters of support to Judge White ahead of the sentence, court documents show.
White, however, called Goonan a “domestic terrorist” during sentencing, according to the DOJ. In addition to his prison time, the judge gave him 15 years of supervised release and required $94,267.51 in restitution.
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