WASHINGTON – A Texas militia member was sentenced to slightly more than seven years in prison Monday, the most severe punishment issued in a case related to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack.
The sentencing comes after a federal court jury in March delivered guilty verdicts on five criminal counts, including obstruction, against Guy Wesley Reffitt in the first jury trial to emerge from the government's far-reaching investigation of the attack.
In an eleventh-hour attempt at an apology, Reffitt, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, stepped before a courtroom podium and offered a rambling, expletive-filled statement.
"I really do hate what I did," he told U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich. "My mouth is my biggest enemy."
Before announcing the sentence, Friedrich described the former oil field worker's unusual expression of remorse as "awfully late."
"Here he sits (and) he has yet to say what he did was wrong," Friedrich said before Reffitt chose to speak. "He has not walked back his comments about being a martyr... It's really disturbing that he repeatedly persists with these views. To this day, he has not disavowed these comments ... He is in a class of his own.
"This is really troubling," the judge said. "This is one (case) where words could help him in some way."
Ultimately, the judge imposed a sentence that added two years to the longest previous term.
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Friedrich earlier denied the government's request for an enhanced sentence, casting Reffitt's crimes as acts of domestic terrorism. Friedrich said such a punishment had not been sought in other Capitol riot cases. Defense attorney Clinton Broden said the government's request "makes a mockery of the criminal justice system."
Broden had cited more lenient sentences in cases of rioters who had assaulted police officers. Reffitt was not charged with such offenses.
For the government, the verdicts marked a successful first test of evidence and witnesses before a jury whose members were drawn from neighborhoods in close proximity to the Capitol, which had been transformed into a battlefield on Jan. 6.
In the case against Reffitt, a member of the paramilitary Three Percenters, prosecutors drew on reels of surveillance video, testimony from Capitol Police officers, a fellow militia member and the defendant's estranged son to portray a rioter described as the "tip of this mob's spear." Reffitt's son told prosecutors that his father warned against reporting his actions to authorities, saying "traitors get shot."
Reffitt, prosecutors said, planned his excursion to D.C. for days and then plunged into the crowd with a handgun holstered to his waist while talking of physically removing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
"We’re taking the Capitol before the day is over," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler said, referring to messages the defendant allegedly sent to associates.
Reffitt's attorney, William Welch, told jurors that his client was merely prone to hyperbole, suggesting that his involvement was more talk than action.
"Guy does brag a lot," Welch said, repeating a theme from his opening statement last week. "He uses a lot of hyperbole that upsets people. People say outrageous things."
Welch also questioned the testimony offered by Reffitt's son, who the attorney claimed was unsure whether his father's threats should be taken seriously.
Capitol Police officers, meanwhile, painted a damning image of the defendant, repeatedly identifying him as leading a screaming mob up an outside Capitol stairway.
"It was a really bad situation," Sgt. Matthew Flood told jurors, describing his arrival on a landing area as the crowd advanced. He said "hundreds" of rioters had already breached the security perimeter when he and other officers arrived.
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