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NEWS JUNE 28, 2021 ■ 7

How the First Capitol Riots

Sentence Was Handed Down

By Jacqueline Thomsen

s U.S. District Senior Judge Royce Lamberth
of the District of Columbia prepared to issue
Athe first sentence for a defendant charged in
the riots at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, he knew that
others would be looking to him for direction on how
to act in the future.
“I really have struggled with what would be an
appropriate sentence in a case like yours,” he told
the defendant, Anna Morgan-Lloyd, a 49-year-old
grandmother from Indiana, before sentencing her
to 36 months of probation.
Federal judges have said sentencing is the most
difficult part of their jobs. For Lamberth, a Reagan
appointee who previously served as chief judge in
D.C., that pressure was compounded by the fact he
was helping to set the tone for future Capitol riot
defendants.
Even so, the judge made clear he believed Royce Lamberth, senior judge of the U.S. District Court
Morgan-Lloyd’s case was different from other for the District of Columbia.
charges stemming from Jan. 6. “Some of these de- Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM.
fendants in some of these other cases think there’s and say this is all just tourists walking through the
no consequence to this, and there is a consequence,” Capitol is all just utter nonsense.”
Lamberth said, after saying that Martin Luther King Lamberth said the penalties in each of the Jan. 6
Jr. “proudly paid the penalty” after being arrested for cases will depend on each individual case and per-
demonstrations. son, and that Morgan-Lloyd’s case “turns out to me
He made clear he did not think the Jan. 6 riots to be an easy case” because of her cooperation with
were a “peaceful demonstration,” even if some of the law enforcement.
defendants might assert so. “I’m especially troubled However, he said he also “finds troubling” that
by the account of some members of Congress that these riot defendants “are being treated differently
Jan. 6 was a day of tourists just walking through the than defendants in other cases around the country,”
Capitol,” Lamberth said, referencing comments by adding: “That’s a very difficult thing for the court to
Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Georgia. “I don’t know what deal with.”
planet these people are on.” Lamberth referenced riot and looting charges
And he cited recent court rulings, including one that emerged from the anti-police violence dem-
by U.S. District Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the Dis- onstrations that took place last summer, after the
trict of Columbia, which makes some of the video killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which the
that had only been shown in court more available to judge acknowledged are largely being handled by
the public. The judge said that footage “will show that local authorities.
the attempts of some congressmen to rewrite history ■ Continued on PAGE 8

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