Matthew Bledsoe, a participant in last year’s Capitol riot originally hailing from Tennessee who tried during trial to make it sound as though climbing a wall outside the Capitol was just the sort of thing he’d do on a regular basis around his place of residence — as though Tennesseans don’t know how to use doors, or something, recently asked for an extension of his self-surrender date for starting his prison sentence.
Bledsoe was sentenced to four years in prison, and the date he was originally provided for surrendering to authorities was Thanksgiving, which this year is November 24. Bledsoe requested an extension to either next year or at least after Thanksgiving weekend, citing both family concerns — he has two daughters, both of whom are under 10 years old — and issues related to his business, which he has apparently been working on prepping to continue in his absence. Prosecutors opposed Bledsoe’s extension request, filing a brief set of arguments including that Bledsoe was already provided enough time for setting up his business to effectively continue during his incarceration. (They didn’t directly mention the stated concerns for the personal impacts on his family from kickstarting his time in jail on Thanksgiving.)
Federal Judge Beryl Howell accepted prosecutors’ arguments questioning whether more time for working on his business would really be in order. (In an original filing from Bledsoe’s defense, there aren’t many specific details establishing why extending the time for his surrender to authorities to next year would be necessary or effective for whatever he’s pursuing.) Howell, however, let Bledsoe temporarily delay surrendering to authorities until after Thanksgiving. Bledsoe’s “motion is denied insofar as he requests that his self-surrender date be postponed until January 2023,” Howell said. “Defendant has already had over four months since his conviction at trial to make the necessary arrangements regarding control of his moving business during his incarceration, and a further lengthy delay is unwarranted.”
“However, defendant’s motion is granted insofar as he requests that his self-surrender date be postponed until after the Thanksgiving weekend, as he is currently directed to self-surrender on Thanksgiving Day,” Howell continued on Friday. “Defendant is therefore directed to self-surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on a date after November 30, 2022.” Open-ended extensions of the point at which Bledsoe was turning himself in for his sentence could’ve gotten out of hand rather easily, one could imagine.
In other news related to the riot, Trump recently insisted on the release of all those detained in connection to the violence. He didn’t distinguish between non-violent offenders and those charged with violent crimes, and he didn’t specify just those in pretrial detention versus those already sentenced. He said everybody!
Image: Brett Davis/ Creative Commons
