Three participants in the Capitol riot were found guilty by a judge this week of federal criminal charges of assaulting police and are facing potentially years-long prison sentences.
Pennsylvania man Robert Morss, Virginia man Geoffrey William Sills, and Texas man David Lee Judd all participated in pushes against police in the area of the Capitol known as the Lower West Terrace. Inside the Lower West Terrace tunnel, rioters attempted to use the collective force of their bodies to break through a police line via rocking back and forth in a so-called heave-ho motion. Amid the melee in the tunnel, Judd hurled what evidence suggests was a lit firecracker towards police, and Sills fired up a flashing strobe light meant to disorient officers. Two of the men — Morss and Sills — were also found guilty of robbery charges for taking items from personnel with the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. Morss took a riot shield from a detective with the department, and Sills took a police baton from someone with the same agency.
Scheduled sentencing dates for Morss, Sills, and Judd stretch across coming months. Per current scheduling, Morss will be sentenced on January 6 of next year — on the second anniversary of the riot, Judd will face sentencing late next February, and Sills will be sentenced much sooner, on November 18, 2022. All three were found guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding, which is a felony offense often used against rioters that comes with up to 20 years in prison if guilty, although significantly shorter sentences are possible. (The highest sentence imposed on any rioter so far is a little over seven years.) Morss and Sills were specifically found guilty of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers with a dangerous weapon, while Judd was found guilty this week of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers. Putting the assault on police charge in the dangerous weapon category adds a substantial amount of time to the potential sentence. Judd’s charge comes with up to eight years, while Morss and Sills’s carries up to 20 years.
The bench trial — in which a judge rather than a jury decided the question of the defendant (or defendants’) guilt — was handled by federal Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee. The Justice Department notes Morss and Judd participated in the so-called heave-ho maneuver involving rioters forcefully pushing against police in the Lower West Terrace tunnel. Morss was eventually among the riot participants who entered the Capitol building itself, which he went into through a broken window. Once inside, he passed a chair through the broken window to nearby rioters. What Morss thought the crowd might want to do with the chair is unknown. Was it that chair that stood in the way of the Trump supporters’ ambitions? Did it harbor magic powers keeping Trump from getting a second term? The point is it’s just ridiculous.
Sills, meanwhile, used the baton he took to hit at least two officers, evidently leading to the specification in his assault charge of using a dangerous weapon. Based on Justice Department information, the specification Morss used a dangerous weapon is connected to his participation in using a line of stolen riot shields against police in the Lower West Terrace tunnel.
The robbery charges carry up to 15 years in prison apiece. Morss — a veteran and former substitute teacher — is in custody, as he has been since his arrest last June. Morss, who is 29 years old, also composed remarks he evidently prepared to eventually make to a judge in which he said he didn’t regret what he did. FBI investigators discovered the comments in his iCloud account. McFadden denied a request from Morss for his release from pretrial detention as recently as June. “His decision to join a violent crowd then has led him into such a crowded trial now,” McFadden remarked. The involvement of what at the time were nine defendants led to logistical delays Morss attempted to use to justify his attempt at getting out.
Image: Tyler Merbler/ Creative Commons
