20-Year Term Given in Bombings of IRS : Courts: Costa Mesa man is also ordered to pay restitution and fine totaling $380,000. Defense lawyer says the sentence will be appealed.

A Costa Mesa man was sentenced Thursday to 20 years in prison and ordered to pay $380,000 to the Internal Revenue Service for a series of bomb attacks at IRS offices in Fresno, Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Dean Harvey Hicks, 45, pleaded guilty in separate hearings in August and October to four counts of using a destructive device against a federal facility and one count of trying to impede the IRS in a string of attacks that ran from 1987 to 1991.

The sentence, handed down by U.S. District Judge Laughlin E. Waters in Los Angeles, includes a restitution payment to the IRS totaling $335,000 for damages to the buildings and a $45,000 fine, according to Assistant U.S. Atty. George Newhouse.

“We are very pleased,” Newhouse said after the court hearing, noting that Hicks will not be eligible for parole for 13 years. “We think Judge Waters delivered a very strong message, both to Mr. Hicks and to anyone in the community who believes they are justified in lashing out (at government),” Newhouse added.

Hicks’ lawyer, Harriet Hawkins, deputy federal public defender, said the sentence will be appealed.

“I thought it was excessive,” she said. “He basically gave (Hicks) the maximum on each count. It’s way above the (federal sentencing) guidelines.”

Officials said Hicks, an electrical engineer, had been angry with the IRS since 1981, when the agency rejected an $8,500 deduction in connection with the Universal Life Church, then penalized him for it.

In six separate incidents--including two initial strikes targeting the Chet Holifield Federal Building in Laguna Niguel--Hicks fired mortar rounds at the federal offices or tied bombs to nearby power poles. In one case, a car bomb exploded in an underground garage of the IRS facility in Los Angeles.

Although the buildings and nearby automobiles were damaged, no one was injured. But Newhouse said that the bombings became increasingly dangerous and that Hicks had become “an urban terrorist.”

Newhouse said that in a letter Hicks sent to the court last September, the defendant showed no remorse for the attacks and the possibility that he could have injured or killed bystanders.