WHEELING, W.Va. — A Brooke County man has been sentenced to spend more than six years in federal prison for trying to interfere with the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Trial.
Hardy Carroll Lloyd, 45, of Follansbee, was sentenced Wednesday to spend 78 months in prison.
Lloyd admitted in a September guilty plea hearing to making online threats to jurors and witnesses connected with the federal hate crimes trial of Robert Bowers, the Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooter. The plea was to the charge of obstruction of the due administration of justice.
U.S. District Attorney Bill Ihlenfeld told MetroNews after the plea that federal investigators discovered Lloyd’s activities during the trial.
“We were very concerned when we first became aware of it. We monitored him very closely and as soon as the trial was resolved we charged him by complaint, arrested him and detained him,” Ihlenfeld said.
Bowers, who killed 11 worshippers and injured six others in the 2018 shootings, was convicted in the trial and the jury sentenced him to the federal death penalty in early August.
Lloyd is described as a self-proclaimed ‘reverend’ of a white supremacy movement. Ihlenfeld said Lloyd tried to convince his followers to do harm to those associated with the trial.
Lloyd received the maximum sentence something that federal prosecutors pushed for.
“The plea kept some of the witnesses from having to testify including some of the folks who had to testify in the Bowers trial in Pittsburgh. Whenever you can avoid having to put someone through that stressful process it’s a good thing,” Ihlenfeld previously said.