A former Laguna Beach resident sought the “horrific deaths” of a judge, two prosecutors and the FBI agents who put him in federal prison on fraud, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday, as the defendant’s attorney said his client was just fantasizing and had no way of carrying out a revenge plot.

John Arthur Walthall, 66, is accused of soliciting the killing of former U.S. District Judge Andrew Guilford, a pair of prosecutors and two FBI agents. Guilford had sentenced him to 14 years in federal prison on a fraud case.

Walthall was sentenced in December 2016 to 20 years in federal prison on top of the 14 years, but that was overturned on appeal in 2019 as U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney was found to have made an error when he denied Walthall’s attempts to represent himself in court.

John Arthur Walthall (File photo)

Walthall “sought others to do what he could no longer to himself,” assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Sheppard said in his opening statement at the retrial on Tuesday. “He intended for the people who put him in prison to die horrific deaths.” That included specifying that the judge should be “put in a (expletive) wood chipper,” as the prosecutor told a previous jury, quoting Walthall’s recorded words.

Walthall “did it simply to have the freedom he desired and the revenge he craved,” Sheppard said.

Walthall was in prison serving the 14-year federal sentence for a gold investment scheme when he was indicted in December 2014 for soliciting the killing of Guilford and the others.

Walthall’s first trial in April 2016 ended with jurors deadlocked 10-2 in favor of guilt, but he was convicted in a retrial.

The case centers around his comments to fellow Lompoc inmates Crisanto Diego Trejos Ortiz and Antonio Rodriguez as well as an undercover FBI agent about hiring a hit squad to kill the judge and the others.

While awaiting trial in the fraud case, Walthall jumped bail and fled to Nevada, where he was recaptured. Before he jumped bail he had a friend buy three guns for him, prosecutors said.

Walthall’s attorney, Charles Brown, said Rodriguez and Ortiz got reductions on their time behind bars for working as confidential informants in the case.

Walthall’s plan was “so outrageous on its face,” Brown said. He bit on a scheme to kill the judge, prosecutors and agents as a way to get his case dismissed, the defense lawyer said.

Walthall didn’t fit in well at Lompoc and was an “angry, broken and bitter man,” Brown said. “He felt betrayed by those closest to him.”

The defendant “didn’t fit in into the normal prison hierarchy,” and was “shunned” by other White inmates, “because he was odd, a loner.” Because he wasn’t allied with any prison group he was “vulnerable,” Brown said.

Walthall enjoyed discussing philosophy and religion at the prison chapel, but when he was alone he had “dark fantasies” to “get back at some of the people” who put him in prison, Brown said.

“This fantasy had gone on for years in his mind,” Brown said.

The informants “approached him with a spark of an idea,” Brown said. “That spark ignited an idea which spread like wildfire in the dry kindling in John Walthall’s mind,” Brown said.

He would come up with ridiculous plans straight out of Tom Clancy novels, Brown said. One included using a drone to get a phone to a hitman who he could coordinate the attacks with, Brown said.

Walthall told the fellow inmates that he would pay them $25 million to hire a 16-member hit squad from Colombia, Brown said. He said they would have to have someone open up a trust in Canada and he would pay them with money from gold mines, Brown said.

“It was a hit squad on consignment,” Brown said.

“You’ll have to ask yourselves if this was a bona fide plan or the fantastical musings of a lonely man,” Brown said. “At what point do thoughts become crimes?.. At what point do our fantasies become criminal?”

Walthall lacked “the means to effectuate the plan,” Brown said. “All you really have is a lonely revenge fantasy without the means to effectuate it, which is not a crime.”

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