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America’s sweetheart, Jacob Chansley, has been sentenced to 41 months’ imprisonment for his role in the Beer Belly Putsch. If my calculations are correct, this takes him out of the running for the GOP Presidential nomination in 2024.
Jacob Chansley, the self-styled "QAnon shaman" who became one of the faces of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol after storming the building in a fur headdress with horns, has been sentenced to nearly three and a half years in prison for his role in the riot.
Photographs of a bare-chested Chansley carrying a bullhorn and a spear adorned with the American flag while howling in halls of the Capitol became some of the iconic images of that violent, chaotic day.
At a hearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., Judge Royce Lamberth sentenced Chansley to 41 months in prison, although he will be given credit for the roughly 10 months he has already served.
"You didn't slug anybody, but what you did here was actually obstruct the functioning of the whole government," Lamberth said. "You know what you did was wrong. I admire you for being able to come to terms."
The Justice Department says Chansley was among the first 30 rioters to enter the Capitol on Jan. 6 as the crowd of Donald Trump supporters overwhelmed police, bashed in windows and pushed into the building. The mob forced lawmakers to flee and temporarily abandon their certification of Joe Biden's election win.
Chansley was arrested days later and indicted on six charges, two of which were felonies, and ordered detained pending trial. He ultimately struck a deal with the government and pleaded guilty in September to a single count of obstruction of an official proceeding.
Unsurprisingly, public opinion on the sentence is divided between those who think he didn’t deserve any jail time at all, and those who want him hanged for treason. You can guess the political affiliation of whomever is saying what.
Reason’s Robby Soave, who has done outstanding work debunking internet freakouts and speaking up for criminal justice reform, is no insurrectionist. From all indications, he’s a principled libertarian. He argues that the sentence is too harsh:
Jacob Chansley, the horned, shirtless figure known as the QAnon Shaman who participated in the mob storming the Capitol on January 6, was sentenced to 41 months in prison for his part in the riot.
If a 3.5-year sentence sounds harsh for what was ultimately a nonviolent charge—obstructing an official proceeding in Congress—consider that Chansley has already spent the past several months in jail in solitary confinement.
[…]
Chansley felt he had no choice but to accept the plea deal that came with that 41-month sentence, of course, because he couldn't risk a trial that could send him to prison for 20 years. This is the sad reality of the criminal justice system: Defendants often plead guilty in order to avoid absurdly long mandatory sentences, and are thus denied the opportunity to actually attempt to prove their innocence before a jury of their peers.
The people who entered and defaced the Capitol on January 6 are not political prisoners, and they are certainly not heroes. They committed trespassing and broke other laws, and it's legitimate for the government to prosecute them. But this sentence is too harsh; Chansley did not commit a violent crime, and is certainly unlikely to re-offend. If prosecutors disagree, they should have to prove that to a jury: Unfortunately, the threat of an even lengthier sentence prompts most defendants to fall in line.
I agree with some of Soave’s points about people being forced into plea deals. I’ve dealt with such cases firsthand. And there is no indication that Chansley physically injured anyone on January 6.
His conduct went quite a bit further than “trespassing," though:
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