(AP) A U.S. judge on Wednesday sentenced four family members to life in prison for convictions stemming from a federal terrorism and kidnapping case that began in 2017 with the search for a toddler who went missing from Georgia and was later found dead when authorities raided a squalid compound in northern New Mexico.
The sentencing comes months after jurors convicted the four defendants in what prosecutors had called a “sick end-of-times scheme.”
The defendants were unsuccessful in their arguments that the severity of the sentences violated their constitutional rights. That will be just one of the arguments they plan to bring up when appealing their convictions. At trial, they suggested that the case was the product of “government overreach” and that they were targeted because they are Muslim.
