Vegas courthouse gunfire illustrates more threats facing judges

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Threats against U.S. judges and federal prosecutors rose almost 12 percent in fiscal 2008, the government said in a report released on Monday hours before a man opened fire with a shotgun in a Las Vegas courthouse.

Judges, court officials and prosecutors reported 1,278 threats in the fiscal year ending on September 30, 2008, up from 1,145 in fiscal 2007 and more than double the 592 reported in 2003, according to the report by the Justice Department's inspector general.

In an incident on Monday that illustrated the threat, a man pulled a shotgun from under his coat and opened fire at a federal courthouse in Las Vegas, the FBI said.

The gunman was killed after he shot dead a court security officer and wounded a U.S. marshal in the building, which also houses the offices of Nevada's two U.S. senators. Officials said that the motive for the shooting was not immediately known and that the gunman apparently was operating alone.

"While threats against federal court officials have continued to increase in the past several years, we found critical deficiencies in the department's threat response program," Inspector General Glenn Fine said in a statement.

The report found the U.S. Marshals Service did not consistently record the potential risk associated with the threat against the judicial officials, which made it difficult to determine whether the response to a threat was appropriate.

In a handful of cases reviewed, four judges and an assistant U.S. attorney did not recall being given any of the protective measures they should have received.

The report released on Monday also said the Marshals Service did not fully coordinate its responses to threats with the FBI and local law enforcement authorities. And judges and prosecutors did not always report threats, it said.

The report urged the Marshals Service to step up efforts to encourage judges and prosecutors to report threats, to conduct threat assessments and to coordinate more fully with the FBI and local law enforcement agencies.

"We have made great strides over the past few years in our judicial security mission, and as the U.S. Marshals Service believes there is always room to perfect the process, we will carry out the report's recommendations with that goal in mind," said Jeff Carter, a spokesman for the Marshals Service.

The service has taken steps to improve security for judges and prosecutors since 2005, following a case in which a man murdered the husband and mother of a federal judge in Chicago.

(Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky, additional reporting by Peter Henderson in San Francisco, editing by David Alexander and Will Dunham)