Biography
Laguerre Payen was a Haitian-born Newburgh, New York resident with documented schizophrenia and severe cognitive impairments at the time he was recruited by FBI informant Shahed Hussein into the May 20, 2009 fictional FBI sting plot. The defense argued and U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon ultimately accepted that he had been particularly vulnerable to the informants manipulation. He was sentenced in June 2011 to 25 years in federal prison. In a July 27, 2023 ruling, Judge McMahon granted him compassionate release, reducing his sentence to time served plus 90 days; he was released on August 4, 2023.
