The claim is that the Everett,
Washington man convicted of detonating a pipe bomb under a Black couple’s car would be subject to one year of electronic location monitoring as part of his supervised release. This condition was announced in a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) press release dated December 15, 2025 and updated January 14, 2026, describing the sentence imposed on 55‑year‑old Steven Goldstine in federal court in
Seattle.
The DOJ Office of Public Affairs summary of the sentencing states that
U.S. District Judge John H. Chun ordered Goldstine to serve five years in federal prison for unlawful possession of a destructive device, unlawful possession of ammunition, and unlawful possession of a firearm, arising from the December 31, 2024 bombing. The same release specifies that Goldstine must then serve three years of supervised release, and that for one of those years he is to be subject to electronic location monitoring.
A parallel press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for
the Western District of Washington, as reflected in search snippets, repeats that Judge Chun imposed three years of supervised release with one year under electronic monitoring following the prison term. Regional broadcast coverage, such as KREM’s December 17, 2025 report, confirms the overall structure of the sentence as five years in prison followed by three years of supervised release, even when outlets do not always repeat the electronic monitoring detail verbatim. This consistency across multiple descriptions of the sentence supports that the monitoring requirement is an official condition of judgment, not an offhand remark.
All of these sources also agree that the supervised release is to begin only after Goldstine completes his federal prison term. With sentencing occurring on December 15, 2025 and a custodial term of five years imposed, Goldstine would remain incarcerated well beyond January 14, 2026, even accounting for possible credit for pretrial detention and standard federal good‑time reductions. There is no reporting or official notice indicating that he has already completed the prison term, been released early, or otherwise advanced to the supervised release phase by that date.
Because supervised release has not yet begun, the one‑year period of electronic location monitoring has likewise not started and therefore cannot yet be considered fulfilled. However, there is also no evidence that the court has modified or vacated this part of the sentence; to the contrary, all available official descriptions continue to list it as a binding condition. In that sense, the requirement is legally in place but operationally pending.
The impact of this condition, once it takes effect, will be individualized but significant: electronic monitoring is designed to enforce compliance with movement and curfew restrictions and to provide closer oversight of a person the court has assessed as posing a heightened risk to the community. For now, though, the appropriate assessment is that the one year of electronic monitoring remains a future component of Goldstine’s sentence rather than a completed sanction.