Mail Carrier Pleads Guilty to Trashing Voter Guides for Atlantic City, South Pass City
A subcontractor mail carrier pleaded guilty in federal court on Wednesday to trashing bundles of League of Women voter guides addressed to households in Atlantic City and South Pass City.
Zechariah Morgan pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of destruction of mail in U.S. District Court in Lander, according to minutes of the hearing.
A misdemeanor count of desertion of mails will be dismissed at his sentencing scheduled for Feb. 17.
Morgan is not in custody. The government will not seek detention, according to the minutes of the hearing.
If the case had gone to trial and he had been convicted, he could have been sentenced to up to a year imprisonment and a $100,000 fine and up to a year of supervised release after custody for each count.
The case started when a U.S. Postal Service contractor in Lander reported a customer in South Pass City said she saw her mail carrier discarding mail in a trash can on Sept. 18, according to an affidavit by a postal inspector.
The contractor had hired Morgan in May as the mail carrier for the route that included South Pass City and Atlantic City, according to the affidavit.
The customer told the contractor that she saw something pornographic, as well as voter guides and other mail in the trash. The postal inspector learned that Morgan's route had received 449 Every Door Direct Mail voter guides from the League of Women Voters.
These were not absentee, or mail-in, ballots.
The contractor talked to Morgan, who said he didn't deliver the voter guides because the mail boxes were always full.
On Friday, the postal inspector interviewed Morgan, who said he had thrown away bundles of voter guides and flyers from Spectrum, according to the affidavit. "Morgan stated he had thrown away pornographic material in the past, as he was not comfortable delivering it."
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