Over 90% of recently sentenced Jan 6 rioters have received prison sentences

[Reepicheep]

Most of the January 6th rioters who committed minor crimes on January 6th, for example, trespassing, have been sentenced. The majority of the recent sentences have been for more serious crimes, many of which involve attacking police officers. 31 of the last 34 rioters sentenced have received jail sentences as summarized below. The rioters who have received multi-year sentences have presumably learned a valuable lesson, namely, that it is generally a bad idea to pick up a metal or wooden club and beat police officers in the head, if the officers are in the midst of performing their duty.

Interestingly, one of the rioters who received an 87 month sentence, Thomas Robertson, was an off-duty police officer. Not surprisingly, Robertson was fired shortly after his arrest. During his trial, Robertson testified that the only reason he was carrying a wooden club is that he needed the club to help him walk as a result of a leg injury he received in Afghanistan. In hindsight, Robertson should probably have hired a better lawyer...

2 rioters - 87 months
1 rioter - 63 month
1 rioter - 46 months
2 rioters - 44 months
1 rioter - 24 months
1 rioter - 12 months
1 rioter - 8 months
1 rioter - 6 months
2 rioters - 5 months
2 rioters - 4 months
2 rioters - 3 months
1 rioter - 75 days
4 rioters - 60 days
1 rioter - 59 days
2 rioters - 45 days
1 rioter - 35 days
1 rioter - 30 days
1 rioter - 20 days
3 rioters - 14 days
1 rioter - 7 days

[Mountain Man]

How many of those were convictions from plea deals?

[CivilDiscourse]

Most of the January 6th rioters who committed minor crimes on January 6th, for example, trespassing, have been sentenced. The majority of the recent sentences have been for more serious crimes, many of which involve attacking police officers. 31 of the last 34 rioters sentenced have received jail sentences as summarized below. The rioters who have received multi-year sentences have presumably learned a valuable lesson, namely, that it is generally a bad idea to pick up a metal or wooden club and beat police officers in the head, if the officers are in the midst of performing their duty.

Interestingly, one of the rioters who received an 87 month sentence, Thomas Robertson, was an off-duty police officer. Not surprisingly, Robertson was fired shortly after his arrest. During his trial, Robertson testified that the only reason he was carrying a wooden club is that he needed the club to help him walk as a result of a leg injury he received in Afghanistan. In hindsight, Robertson should probably have hired a better lawyer...

2 rioters - 87 months
1 rioter - 63 month
1 rioter - 46 months
2 rioters - 44 months
1 rioter - 24 months
1 rioter - 12 months
1 rioter - 8 months
1 rioter - 6 months
2 rioters - 5 months
2 rioters - 4 months
2 rioters - 3 months
1 rioter - 75 days
4 rioters - 60 days
1 rioter - 59 days
2 rioters - 45 days
1 rioter - 35 days
1 rioter - 30 days
1 rioter - 20 days
3 rioters - 14 days
1 rioter - 7 days

Wait, I thought you were "debunking" the fact last year that the rioters were being treated more harshly than BLM by comparing sentences and showing they were weaker. Are you saying that analysis was too preliminary...

[Reepicheep]

How many of those were convictions from plea deals?

29 out of 31 cases were plea deals. The two remaining defendants, Guy Reffitt and Thomas Robertson, each received a prison sentence of 87 months.

[Mountain Man]

29 out of 31 cases were plea deals. The two remaining defendants, Guy Reffitt and Thomas Robertson, each received a prison sentence of 87 months.

Knowing how plea bargaining work gives us good reason to be suspicious of these convictions.

[Ronson]

Most of the January 6th rioters who committed minor crimes on January 6th, for example, trespassing, have been sentenced. The majority of the recent sentences have been for more serious crimes, many of which involve attacking police officers. 31 of the last 34 rioters sentenced have received jail sentences as summarized below. The rioters who have received multi-year sentences have presumably learned a valuable lesson, namely, that it is generally a bad idea to pick up a metal or wooden club and beat police officers in the head, if the officers are in the midst of performing their duty.

Interestingly, one of the rioters who received an 87 month sentence, Thomas Robertson, was an off-duty police officer. Not surprisingly, Robertson was fired shortly after his arrest. During his trial, Robertson testified that the only reason he was carrying a wooden club is that he needed the club to help him walk as a result of a leg injury he received in Afghanistan. In hindsight, Robertson should probably have hired a better lawyer...

2 rioters - 87 months
1 rioter - 63 month
1 rioter - 46 months
2 rioters - 44 months
1 rioter - 24 months
1 rioter - 12 months
1 rioter - 8 months
1 rioter - 6 months
2 rioters - 5 months
2 rioters - 4 months
2 rioters - 3 months
1 rioter - 75 days
4 rioters - 60 days
1 rioter - 59 days
2 rioters - 45 days
1 rioter - 35 days
1 rioter - 30 days
1 rioter - 20 days
3 rioters - 14 days
1 rioter - 7 days

Apparently that's common.

https://www.thefederalcriminalattorn...son%20facility.

REVIEW OF FEDERAL PROBATION AND SUPERVISED RELEASE VIOLATIONS
A person convicted of a federal crime will rarely receive a probation only sentence. Instead, many people serve a term of supervised release after spending several months or years in a federal prison facility...

And unlike local jurisdictions, there is no option to serve a shorter sentence in the county jail. So this is a non story.

[Terraceth]

Knowing how plea bargaining work gives us good reason to be suspicious of these convictions.

Not any more suspicious than we are about other convictions, given that over 90% of convictions in the US as a whole are achieved by plea bargaining. 29/31 of the January 6 convictions being plea bargains is actually pretty average.

[Gondwanaland]

Not any more suspicious than we are about other convictions, given that over 90% of convictions in the US as a whole are achieved by plea bargaining. 29/31 of the January 6 convictions being plea bargains is actually pretty average.

He's likely referring to the coercive plea bargaining system we've been inflicted with in recent years. Here's the ACLU on it:
https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-l...-the-venom-out

[Terraceth]

He's likely referring to the coercive plea bargaining system we've been inflicted with in recent years. Here's the ACLU on it:
https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-l...-the-venom-out

I'm aware of abuses in plea bargaining. That's why I said "not any more suspicious than we are about other convictions."

However, in regards to the article you posted, when looking at it, it seemed familiar to me. Then I realized that someone else posted an excerpt from it elsewhere on this forum a while ago. I'm going to repeat what I said in response to that (this was stated in regards to the three examples the article gives at the start of alleged plea bargain abuse):

Only the first of these seems to be a real indictment of plea bargaining.

The second case is one where, if it wasn't for the possibility of plea bargaining, it seems like basically all of the same things would've happened. If anything the possibility of a plea bargain seems to have actually made it better for her. It's possible the prosecutor might have charged them with something lesser if plea bargaining wasn't an option, but that's speculative.

The third case simply asserts that the case was "paper thin" without going into any details on why that is the case. Indeed, the fact he was found guilty would indicate that it was probably not, in fact, "paper thin".

So I looked into the matter, as the link offered in the article is no longer available. Here are some articles I read on the subject:
https://www.ajc.com/news/crime--law/...CEjPUvt61bw7L/
https://www.11alive.com/article/news...5-0c56ccd7e961
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...years-ago.html

So here are the facts as I understand it. Ray Cromartie was involved in a robbery in which someone was shot to death. There is no dispute in this fact--even he doesn't deny that. His assertion, however, is that the person who actually shot the victim was Corey Clark, who was with him during the robbery. Clark claims the opposite, that Cromartie was the one who pulled the trigger. It appears the detectives believed Clark over Cromartie so they charged Cromartie with the murder. The evidence that caused them to charge Cromartie over Clark, it seems, is that the getaway driver (Thaddeus Lucas) said he believed Clark was the culprit, and two others said that they heard Clark admit he was the murderer.

This is not "paper thin" evidence. We know that Cromartie was at the scene of the crime. We know he was involved in the robbery. The only question is whether it was him or Clark who pulled the trigger, and the available evidence that I see points to Cromartie far more than it points to Clark.

Now, in the time since the trial, there is some evidence that may change things. Thaddeus Lucas, soon before the execution (over two decades after the trial) asserted that he doesn't think he was right anymore and believes that Clark was the killer. And there is also Georgia's refusal to test DNA (even though apparently the victim's daughter asked them to), though again this doesn't seem like it was available at the time of the trial. One can absolutely criticize Georgia for ordering the execution to go forward while refusing to do the testing that might change things (alternatively, it might make no difference, but the point is we don't know for sure). However, even if that's a gross miscarriage of justice, that isn't related to plea bargaining. And as noted, the article's claim that the case was "paper thin" seems rather inaccurate. Someone could try to use this as an argument against the death penalty, but to use it against plea bargaining makes little sense.

So ultimately I don't see how either the second or third examples prove anything about problems with plea bargaining. The second is at best a speculative argument (that things might have gone differently), and the third seems even less related, not to mention its considerable exaggeration of it being a "paper thin" case. Which also makes me wonder how accurately they're representing the other two cases.

I'm not saying the current plea bargaining system doesn't have issues, but I don't think the article chose particularly good examples to make its case.

[rogue06]

Over 90% of recently sentenced Jan 6 rioters have received prison sentences

Not sure what the point here is but that 90% of those prosecuted and convicted received prison sentences only makes sense.

[CivilDiscourse]

Not sure what the point here is but that 90% of those prosecuted and convicted received prison sentences only makes sense.

I believe it's a gloat.

Though, of course, he was singing a different tune when the research was very early and the lighter court cases were all that went though....

That claim is often made by Trump supporters. The claim is absolutely with 100% certainty false. Repeating a lie ten thousand times does not make the lie any more true than the first time it was told.


https://apnews.com/article/records-r...f2fdd3345dace8

Records rebut claims of unequal treatment of Jan. 6 rioters
(published August 30, 2021)

It’s a common refrain from some of those charged in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and their Republican allies: The Justice Department is treating them harshly because of their political views while those arrested during last year’s protests over racial injustice were given leniency.

Court records tell a different story.

The AP found that more than 120 defendants across the United States have pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial of federal crimes including rioting, arson and conspiracy. More than 70 defendants who’ve been sentenced so far have gotten an average of about 27 months behind bars. At least 10 received prison terms of five years or more...

[rogue06]

I believe it's a gloat.

Gloating that of those convicted that they got prison sentences?

What did he expect?

[CivilDiscourse]

Interesting that the lawfare blog has noticed that democratic justices are going out of their way to punish more harshly:

Source: https://www.lawfareblog.com/are-judges-showing-their-political-colors-jan-6-criminal-cases

Here’s what the Post did. It reviewed the 74 sentences that had been handed down by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (where all the Jan. 6 Capitol riot cases are being filed) as of the first anniversary of the event. Then it compared those sentences to the terms the prosecutors had sought.

As an initial matter, the Post found that 49 defendants—two-thirds—received lighter sentences than prosecutors had recommended.

That much was not surprising. Light sentences were to be expected given that (a) all of these sentences stemmed from guilty pleas—a factor counseling leniency in itself; (b) prosecutors often seek more time—and defense lawyers less—than they realistically expect, with judges imposing sentences in between; (c) nearly 90 percent of the pleas were to nonviolent misdemeanors; (d) the vast majority involved first offenders; and (e) the lion’s share of pleas were, in fact, to Class B misdemeanors—petty offenses carrying only a maximum theoretical term of six months in jail. (See my own analysis of the early guilty pleas here.)

Still, when the paper drilled down, it uncovered some unmistakable trends. Of the 49 sentences that were lighter than prosecutors sought, 30 (61 percent) had been handed down by Republican appointees. This tilt could not be explained by the distribution of Republican appointees on the bench. Of all the judges who have sentenced a Capitol riot defendant, 10 were appointed by Democrats, while eight were appointed by Republicans.

Upon swiveling the tables—homing in on which judges imposed sentences that were harsher than the prosecutors requested—a mirror-image pattern emerged. Of the 11 sentences that were tougher than the government sought, nine (82 percent) were imposed by Democratic appointees.

At a more granular level, matters got even worse. Two judges appointed by President Trump were the ones who most frequently went under prosecutors’ recommendations. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols had done so in eight of the 10 sentencings he’d handled, for instance, while Judge Trevor McFadden had done the same thing in five of his seven sentencings.

At the other end of the spectrum, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, a President Obama appointee—and former supervisor in the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C.—was the harshest sentencer. She imposed more time than prosecutors sought in seven of her eight sentencings. (As early as last October, several daily reporters had noticed that McFadden and Chutkan were emerging as “polar opposites” in sentencing, as the New York Times’s Alan Feuer put it, with McFadden being “the judge who’s been the most skeptical of jailtime for low-level J6 defendants.”)

So, yes, something seems to be going on. Of course, I don’t have data on whether Nichols’s, McFadden’s or Chutkan’s sentencing proclivities in the Jan. 6 cases are out of alignment with their propensities in non-Capitol riot cases.

© Copyright Original Source

[Ronson]

Not sure what the point here is but that 90% of those prosecuted and convicted received prison sentences only makes sense.

Based on the article linked above, it is the common outcome. Nothing unusual about the sentencing at all. And seeing as the majority got less than a year and probably granted 'time already served', there's only a small fraction (seven people out of hundreds?) that got slapped with sentencing reflecting actual crimes.

[Sparko]

Most of the January 6th rioters who committed minor crimes on January 6th, for example, trespassing, have been sentenced. The majority of the recent sentences have been for more serious crimes, many of which involve attacking police officers. 31 of the last 34 rioters sentenced have received jail sentences as summarized below. The rioters who have received multi-year sentences have presumably learned a valuable lesson, namely, that it is generally a bad idea to pick up a metal or wooden club and beat police officers in the head, if the officers are in the midst of performing their duty.

Interestingly, one of the rioters who received an 87 month sentence, Thomas Robertson, was an off-duty police officer. Not surprisingly, Robertson was fired shortly after his arrest. During his trial, Robertson testified that the only reason he was carrying a wooden club is that he needed the club to help him walk as a result of a leg injury he received in Afghanistan. In hindsight, Robertson should probably have hired a better lawyer...

2 rioters - 87 months
1 rioter - 63 month
1 rioter - 46 months
2 rioters - 44 months
1 rioter - 24 months
1 rioter - 12 months
1 rioter - 8 months
1 rioter - 6 months
2 rioters - 5 months
2 rioters - 4 months
2 rioters - 3 months
1 rioter - 75 days
4 rioters - 60 days
1 rioter - 59 days
2 rioters - 45 days
1 rioter - 35 days
1 rioter - 30 days
1 rioter - 20 days
3 rioters - 14 days
1 rioter - 7 days

So 90% of those sentenced were sentenced?