Sept. 23 – A California man received a three-month prison sentence as punishment yesterday after pleading no contest to a charge of mailing threatening letters to a federal prosecutor.

But because the defendant, Herbert Darrell Hay, has been in federal custody since mid-December 1980, the three-month sentence was served while Hay sat in jail waiting for his day in court.

Hay, reportedly linked to the Charles Manson family, will not be released from jail, though.

He will become an inmate of the Texas Department of Corrections in Huntsville again and complete a prison sentence for a murder conviction in Kendall County.

Hay, 26, was charged last year in a federal indictment with mailing threatening letters to Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Berg.

In a plea bargain agreement reached yesterday between Assistant U.S. Attorney John Patrick Smith of Brownsville and Hay’s court-appointed attorney Douglas Tinker, the federal charge was reduced to a misdemeanor and Hay pleaded no contest.

U.S. District Judge George P. Kazen of Laredo accepted the plea and assessed the punishment.