Derek Jancart, an Air Force veteran from Ohio who pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, is the first of three misdemeanor defendants facing sentencing this week in cases prosecutors hope will yield home confinement or time behind bars.
Jancart, 39, of Columbus, admitted in July to coming to Washington with a gas mask and two-way radios after posting on Facebook about whether axes were allowed in the nation’s capital.
Jancart admitted in plea papers that he posted a Facebook video in which he is heard laughing while a co-defendant and friend screams, “We have you surrounded!” at vastly outnumbered police officers engaged in hand-to-hand combat with rioters. The pair breached the building and made their way to the evacuated office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
“Jancart . . . incited and celebrated the violence that was required to break through the police line,” prosecutors said in sentencing papers last week. “As an Air Force veteran, Jancart was well aware of the great jeopardy posed by violent entry into the Capitol by the rioters, and Jancart was also aware of the violence required to make that entry into the Capitol.”
Asking for probation, Jancart’s defense attorney said Jancart did not push against police lines and entered through an open door only after lines were breached by others: “He did not hide his face nor carry any weapons, poles or flags; he did not break anything; he did not yell. . . . All he did was walk around and occasionally take pictures.”
Many judges find sentencing the most wrenching part of their jobs. But the violent attack on Congress’s certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election that contributed to five deaths has defied historic comparison.
Judges appointed by presidents of both parties, many with years of Justice Department, national security or congressional experience, have unsparingly denounced the attack and comparisons of riot participants to “patriots,” “tourists” or “political prisoners.”
Whether such strong public statements are a matter of jawboning, rhetoric or deterrence from the bench, many judges have made clear that they are considering at least some confinement even for first offenders, even as they weigh each individual’s circumstances and have mostly imposed community service so far.
“You disgraced this country in the eyes of the world. . . . You are going to have to convince me not to lock you up for what you did. I find it outrageous what you did,” U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton told Anthony Mariotto, 53, last week when the Fort Pierce, Fla., man pleaded guilty to one count of illegal demonstrating after posting on Facebook a photograph of himself in the evacuated Senate gallery.
“What if the next time, the Democrats lose the presidency? And that person says, I won, despite what the votes were, and Democrats rise up and tear up the Capitol? I suppose then that would be all right, based on what you did?” asked Walton, appointed by three Republican presidents to District and federal courts since 1981.
“I think the presumption should be that these offenses were an attack on our democracy and that jail time . . . should be expected,” U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan, a 1982 Ronald Reagan appointee who coordinated federal litigation by terrorism detainees at Guantánamo Bay, said in July in sentencing a Manassas, Va., couple to probation for illegal parading in the Capitol.
And Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan warned Dawn Bancroft of suburban Philadelphia to prepare to explain her actions at sentencing after she pleaded guilty to misdemeanor trespassing at the Capitol and sent a video on Facebook of herself saying: “We broke into the Capitol. . . . We got inside, we did our part,” and adding, “We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin’ brain, but we didn’t find her.”
Good people who never got into trouble with the law “on January 6th morphed into terrorists. . . . I want you to start thinking about that,” Sullivan told Bancroft.
Bancroft said that she would give it thought, and that she believed in accepting responsibility for her actions.
Nearly half of 600 people charged in the Capitol breach have been charged with misdemeanors, and about 25 percent of them have pleaded guilty. Most admitted to single petty offenses such as trespassing or illegal parading that rarely result in prison time for first offenders.
Of seven misdemeanor offenders sentenced so far, five received probation, and prosecutors did not seek additional time for two others held pretrial for six months, in part because of past convictions for attempted murder and evading police.
Prosecutors drew a distinction in seeking probation only for Northern California architect Valerie Ehrke, for example, who was inside the Capitol for only about a minute, made it only about 15 feet, and did not engage in violence or significant social media activity. U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman said that lawmakers no more than the president should have people unlawfully “entering their house — our house — the people’s house, while they are doing their jobs,” but agreed to impose 120 hours of community service after Ehrke was one of the first to submit to an FBI interview and decide to plead guilty.
Jancart, a steelworker who told court officials he enlisted in the Air Force in April 2003 and was honorably discharged in 2007 after serving nearly six months in Afghanistan, is the first of more than 62 people who claim U.S. military service to be charged and sentenced in the riot.
Separately, prosecutors also seek two months of home confinement for Andrew Bennett of Columbia, Md., who recorded the shooting of Ashli Babbitt as she climbed through a broken Speaker’s Lobby entrance window; and three months for former Oklahoma City Thunder season ticket manager Danielle Doyle. Both face sentencing Thursday.
Bennett admonished others not to be destructive or fight with officers and cooperated fully with authorities, prosecutors said. Doyle climbed through a broken window, appeared to chant or yell near police and photographed others climbing scaffolding or breaching windows, prosecutors said, but did not personally espouse violence or engage in destruction.
But for their actions alongside so many others, the riot probably would have failed, prosecutors said. Neither defendant has yet submitted a sentencing recommendation.