"Judge Randolph Moss just sentenced Paul Hodgkins to eight months in prison for his role in the January 6 riot. Hodgkins will face two years of probation and pay the $2,000 restitution agreed on in his plea agreement (though will not be fined). The sentence was about what I expected, and a fair sentence for someone who pled guilty first and engaged in no violence (and even tried to calm other rioters)."
"As I noted here, the important part of this sentence is how Moss got to the sentence. Moss treated January 6 as a grave danger to democracy, and set a sentence to send a message to deter others from engaging in similar behavior. But he also noted that Hodgkins pled guilty first, and did not engage in violence. He even noted that Hodgkins had not engaged in inflammatory speech online, as virtually all January 6 defendants charged with obstruction have."
"Moss emphasized two things about Hodgkins' conduct that worked against him. First, that he wore goggles, indicating that he came prepared to defend his position. More tellingly, Moss noted that Hodgkins brought a Trump flag and waved it around in the well of the Capitol, an expression of loyalty to a single individual, not loyalty to the American flag. This is not the baseline sentence for all January 6 rioters accused of obstruction. It is a sentence that was available to Hodgkins and few others,"
An eight-month prison term, two years probation, and $2,000 restitution were imposed on Paul Hodgkins; no fine was assessed. The sentence balanced the gravity of the January 6 attack as a threat to democracy with mitigating factors such as early guilty plea, lack of violence, no inflammatory online speech, and efforts to calm other rioters. The court cited goggles as evidence of preparedness and waving a Trump flag as expressing loyalty to an individual rather than the nation. The court framed the sentence as a deterrent and applied a significant downward variance from a 21-month guideline maximum.
Read at Emptywheel
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