A California man has been sentenced to two months for making racially charged threats against Barack Obama during his presidential campaign, officials said.

Walter Bagdasarian, 48, of La Mesa, Calif., was sentenced Monday in federal court to two months in a halfway house, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Tuesday.

Bagdasarian was convicted in July of writing two threatening messages on a Yahoo message board last October. The messages talked about shooting Obama and contained racial epithets, prosecutors said.

Bagdasarian was convicted of threatening a major candidate for the office of president. Monday, he apologized in court for his actions, saying he was drunk when he wrote the messages.

U.S. District Judge Marilyn Huff sentenced Bagdasarian to two years of federal probation with the condition he spend 60 days in the halfway house.