Ex-Judson teacher loses appeal in death-threat case
He was convicted of sending violent emails to a former girlfriend.By Guillermo Contreras
A former Judson High School history teacher has lost his bid to overturn the conviction and 15-year prison sentence he got for sending death threats and other graphically violent emails to several people, including an ex-student he had dated.
A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled Wednesday that Steven Weste failed to convince them that U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez erred at trial, or that the judge made a mistake in calculating Weste's sentence.
A federal jury convicted Weste, 34, in July 2009 of all 15 counts he faced, including threatening to kill several people, among them Amanda Stewart, his former student whom he started dating after she graduated in May 2005.
