Quick background: Friend from highschool, we fell out of touch for a while, until I saw a bunch of posts on his Facebook acct and we started talking again about 2 months ago.
He graduated from a Top 10 US University engineering program in the top 5% of his class. Went to a pretigious grad program in NY for a PhD in Neurobiology. Within 4 years, he's published 4 first author papers (very impressive by academic standards).
About 3-4 months ago, he felt his boss was pressuring him unfairly hard to get him to produce more; to the point where he felt it was harassment. So he approached his Dean about this. Now here, things get fuzzy, as I only have his side of the story. But sounds like something went awry, and his Dean sided with his boss and referred him to a psychiatrist because he was behaving erratically, and manic. (He claims his own psych gave him a clean bill of health, and attributed everything to be overworked). Anyways, he ended up being suspended from the program, and ultimately resigned his spot.
He spends the next few months effectively a vagabond, with little money, posting all sorts of STUPID ass shit on facebook. Ranting and raving about the program he just left//got shit-canned from. Some of these things he posted do honestly look threatening towards his former employers.
Apparently, his program responded and contacted the FBI. Last week, he was arrested on 6cts felony terrorism charges, as well as 4th degree posession of a dangerous weapon (a BB gun they found at his house
) Currently in Suffolk County Riverhead correctional facility...
Opinions on his chances of getting out of this...?
Also his family is looking for a defense lawyer if anyone knows someone who would specialize in something like this, please PM me.
ETA: probably did not help his case that he recently posted 2 pictures of him holding AR15s in a pawn shop in S Dakota.... Not that it should matter, but NY....
TL;DR- Friend seems to be getting his 1st amendment rights trampled, and a mental breakdown confused for an actual threat to society. Incredibly smart PhD student went from publishing in academic journals to prison in the span of 5 months.