A Texas militia member on Monday received the longest sentence to date of any participant in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol: seven and a quarter years in prison.
Guy Reffitt, 49, was the first Jan. 6 defendant to go before a jury and was convicted in March on five felony charges, including interfering with police during civil disorder, obstructing the tallying of the electoral votes and threatening his children if they reported him to authorities.
However, U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich declined the Justice Department’s request to treat Reffitt’s crimes as terrorism, which would have substantially increased the recommended sentence under federal guidelines.
It was federal prosecutors’ first request to draw tougher punishment for a Jan. 6 defendant by classifying his actions as domestic terrorism, but the judge concluded that it was not appropriate to apply the more severe sentencing guidelines permitted under federal law in terrorism-related cases.
