A 38-year-old Odessa man who is serving 41 months in federal prison in connection with a bomb hoax was sentenced to another 12 years in prison this week after pleading guilty to several other cases in state court.
According to court documents, on April 7, David Paul Finnegan, 38, left a suspicious device at the front steps of the Ector County Courthouse. The device consisted of a large PVC pipe containing miscellaneous objects. It was held together with black tape and had a wristwatch taped to it. The Odessa Police Department Explosives Ordinance Disposal team was called out to examine the device. After the EOD technicians rendered it safe, they determined the device did not contain explosives.
Further investigation revealed Finnegan was scheduled to have hearings on various matters at the courthouse the day he planted the device. As a result of its discovery, the courthouse was evacuated and shut down to the public for much of the day, causing various court proceedings to be postponed, including Finnegan’s.
Finnegan pleaded guilty to one count of perpetrating a hoax in U.S. District Court and was sentenced to 3 years and five months in federal prison and three years of supervised release in September.
According to Ector County Courthouse records, Finnegan signed several plea agreements with the Ector County District Attorney’s Office Wednesday to clear up nine pending cases going back to 2020.
Finnegan pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance, possession of stolen property, two counts of injury to a child, tampering with a government record and unauthorized use of a vehicle. In exchange, two counts of theft of property and one count of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle were dismissed.
Under the terms of the plea agreement, Judge Denn Whalen sentenced Finnegan to 10 years in prison on one of the injury to a child counts and ran two other 10-year sentences concurrently with it. He also sentenced Finnegan to two years in prison in one of the stolen car cases and ran it consecutive to the 10-year sentence, but concurrently with two other two-year sentences.
Ector County District Attorney Dusty Gallivan said the first part of Finnegan’s 12-year sentence will run concurrently with his federal prison sentence.
