CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) — A convicted felon in Missouri accused of livestreaming threats to bomb and kill people while he was dressed up as the Batman villain known as The Joker was sentenced Friday to 60 days in jail, with credit for several months served after his arrest.
Jeremy Garnier, 51, of University City, was sentenced after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of making a terrorist threat. Prosecutors reduced the charge from a felony for the March 2020 incident.
Garnier told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he never intended to make a threat and pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor to avoid many more months in jail.
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“I was talking like The Joker,” Garnier said Saturday in a telephone interview. “I was in character. Everybody knew that it was a joke and that I had no intentions of following through with a threat.”
Garnier told the Post-Dispatch he served more than 20 years in federal and state prison for robbing a credit union in the 1980s and for other felonies, in order to support his crack habit. He said he is now sober and wants to use his platform to raise awareness about the opioid epidemic.
He said he has learned another hard lesson.
“Think before you act,” he said. “Your actions have repercussions. No matter how trivial and joking I thought it was, people took it seriously.”