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Violent attacks such as Sunday's shooting at the home of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas are impossible to prevent, according to judicial security experts, but the likelihood of such incidents can be mitigated.

Foiling attacks against judges is often a challenge because individuals who commit such crimes rarely signal their intentions. But vigilance about certain types of behavior and open communication with the U.S. Marshals Service can reduce the risk, according to some security experts.

Salas' 20-year-old son, Daniel Anderl, was killed and her husband, attorney Mark Anderl, was seriously injured Sunday when a man dressed as a FedEx employee opened fire into their North Brunswick home. A lawyer who had a case before Salas, Roy Den Hollander, was identified by the FBI as the gunman. Den Hollander was found dead in an apparent suicide Monday.

"You're not going to stop 100% of violence. You can do a lot of things to try and stop it and put up a whole lot of hurdles," said John Muffler, a retired U.S. marshal who ran the agency's National Center for Judicial Security.

Violent attacks against federal judges are rare. Since 1979, four federal judges have been killed in office. In 2005, an assailant broke into the home of a federal judge in Chicago, Joan Lefkow, and killed her husband and mother.

Threats against judges are on the rise, according to Muffler, who said the trend correlates with the growth of social media, enabling those aggrieved about a particular judge's actions to find like-minded people. "Instead of having one inappropriate communication, it's 100," he said.

In 2019, the marshals recorded 4,449 threats and inappropriate communications against judges and other protected persons, including federal prosecutors. That's compared with only 926 in 2015. Such threats increased steadily for the next three years, peaking at 4,542 in 2018. Part of that increase is tied to doing a better job at watching for, and flagging, potential threats.

People who make hostile phone calls to judges' chambers or send angry letters to judges rarely escalate to in-person violent behavior against judges, Muffler said. But certain types of conduct are generally a "pathway to violent behavior," he said. The mindset begins with a sense of grievance, anger over a lost case or a feeling of being mistreated. That can escalate into a determination to extract vengeance. From there, a violent attack can take shape with actions such as driving past the judge's house, Muffler said.

"Understanding that pathway behavior and being able to mitigate that is what we can do," Muffler said.

Among men, a history of committing domestic violence is a strong predictor of future violence,  Muffler said. In addition, civil litigants are far more likely than criminal defendants to act out against a judge.

Federal judges are given safety and security training by U.S. marshals when they first go on the bench, and then every year after, said Muffler. The marshals also rely on court staff and judges' family members to watch for and notify the agency when they see certain conduct.

"It's a team effort. It's everybody's responsibility. The marshals are not omnipresent—they are not with the judges 24-7," he said.

In Salas' case, assailant Den Hollander appeared before her in connection with a civil suit over the government's policy limiting the military draft to only men. Den Hollander called himself a "men's rights" attorney and brought other suits to address what he felt was society's discrimination against men.

In a post on his website discussing that litigation and criticizing judges who ruled against him, Den Hollander said: "This trilogy of lawsuits for men's rights makes clear that there are now two classes of people in America: one of princesses—females, and the other of servants—males. Governments, from local to state to federal, treat men as second class citizens whose rights can be violated with impunity when it benefits females. Need I say the courts are prejudiced, need I say they are useless, need I say it's time for men to take the law into their hands?"

The U.S. Marshals Service has a reputation among the federal judiciary as being effective, said David Herndon, who retired as the chief judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. He also chaired the U.S. Judicial Conference's Committee on Judicial Security.

"You can't protect against every possible danger. You can't stop every incident, quite frankly," Herndon said. "The ongoing effort is to mitigate dangers to particular judges and to the judiciary as a whole."

Herndon said he believes that U.S. marshals are adequately financed to permit them to respond appropriately to the security needs of federal judges. The agency has asked for an additional $4.8 million for judicial protection and intelligence operations, according to its current budget request.

"I know they have the skill, they have the talent, they have the resources, they have the drive to do what needs to be done," he said.

When it comes to preventing violence against federal judges, the operative word is "manage," as in managing the threat, rather than eliminating it, said Frederick Calhoun, a former U.S. marshal and co-author of a book about violence against the judiciary.

"If you're going to be in the business of risk management, you have to believe it's preventable, but it's very challenging," said Calhoun.

His book refers to people who actually intend to harm a judge as hunters, and those who get upset and send threatening letters, a much larger group, as howlers. There is little overlap between the groups, although howlers occasionally become hunters, he said.

Threats against federal judges are far more common than threats against federal prosecutors, which are also investigated by the marshals, he said. "When you feel you've been treated unjustly, your focus goes to the judge," he said.

Calhoun recalled a success story from his days as a marshal, in which a litigant in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Rhode Island made threats against the judge on her case. When marshals arranged a meeting with the woman, she described to them at length the events that led her to bankruptcy, which included problems with an ice cream store she operated, and showed them a big box of documents from the case.

When a marshal mentioned the threats she had made to the judge, the woman was immediately contrite, Calhoun said. The marshal told the woman, "'Ma'am, we know you don't mean anything by that, but if somebody else heard [the threatening statements], that could cause real problems for you.' She immediately backed away and said 'I'm sorry.' That kind of refocused her a bit, and we started hearing less of her," Calhoun said.