Con Kid

Two weeks ago, on August 24, Jimmy Sabatino walked into the courtroom of federal Judge Edward B. Davis to plead guilty to the threats against the prosecutors and the judge. Two U.S. Marshals held his arms, his hands cuffed behind his back. Sabatino's head was shaved to a fine stubble, the fat on the back of his neck rolling up like the skin on a Shar-Pei. His dark eyes drooped sheepishly on a face that hadn't seen sun in almost two years. His right eye is lazy; when he sat next to attorney Kaufman at a table before the hearing began, he seemed to stare into his lawyer's ear. Acne spots covered his forehead. He wore prison-issue tan pajamas.

The few spectators in the gallery sat as if at a funeral, family to the left, three reporters to the right. "How are you feeling?" he mouthed to his father, who sat beside a younger woman whose arm draped over his shoulder. Peter Sabatino quietly responded that he was all right, though he declined to speak to the reporters. "I don't want to talk about it," he said.

Before pronouncing Sabatino guilty, Davis read through a perfunctory list of questions. Do you really want to plead guilty? Did anyone force you to plead guilty? Do you understand what your plea means? Do you recognize that I am friends with the judge you threatened to kill? Sabatino answered yes to every query.

"I've caused enough trouble," he told Davis in his only statement. "I just want to end this as quickly as possible."

Nothing is going to end soon. Sabatino still faces sentencing for the death threats. And next week he is scheduled to begin trial for allegedly assaulting the prison guard, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of ten years in prison. (He has requested to be co-counsel in his assault defense.)

He filed a civil lawsuit last month seeking damages for the nearly full year he spent locked in the FDC's solitary confinement ward. He wants $100 per day in lost income, though he didn't spell out exactly what income he could be generating from jail. And he also asked for punitive damages of -- what the heck -- ten million dollars.

"As he gets older it's going to be tougher for him to pull this off," says Max the security consultant. "His boyish charm is leaving him. For years judges would look at him with a gleam in their eye and see this little kid who has taken on the big bad corporation. It will be interesting to see what happens to him now."

Max adds one more thing. "If you get a chance to talk to him," he implores, "give him my love, will you? I mean it."