Gilbert H. Shaw v. United States Postal Service

OSCAR H. DAVIS, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a decision of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) sustaining petitioner’s removal from the *1079United States Postal Service for sabotaging government property. The charge was that on November 8, 1979 Shaw, a mail sorting clerk who was operating a letter sorting-machine and assigned on that day to Console 5 of the machine, wilfully and deliberately stuffed a postcard into the B-chain of that console, triggering a breakdown of the machine for six minutes (causing a delay of more than 350 pieces of mail).

After a hearing including oral…