A man from southern Florida who participated in the early 2021 assault on the Capitol, where he committed acts of physical violence against police, has been sentenced to 57 months in prison, though he won’t be starting out with that much considering the time he has already spent in detention. That overarching total, though, is over four and a half years, and it’s slightly below what prosecutors had sought in the case.
The defendant was Mason Courson, who stood accused of using a police baton originating with officers that day to strike at an officer with the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department who’d been essentially pulled into the crowd and was on the ground. This officer has been identified by the details “B.M.,” meaning it wasn’t Michael Fanone, though some of the details mirror what happened to him. “One who does not hesitate to attack a police officer will not hesitate to attack a member of the public,” federal Judge Rudolph Contreras said around the time of delivering Courson’s sentence.
Courson has a past criminal record that includes allegations of physical violence, including against a nurse. Contreras also accepted the characterization of the police baton Courson was using as especially dangerous, including in comparison to some of the other actual and makeshift weapons that participants in the Capitol attack were using that day. As highlighted by Courthouse News Service, Courson expressed claims of regret, which is more than we’ve seen from figures like Donald Trump himself, whose lies about the 2020 presidential race directly inspired what happened that day. Whenever Trump or figures like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) express support for participants in the riot, many of whom had their behavior comprehensively documented, it’s worth at least remembering that they’re supporting people accused of, among other things, beating a police officer while that cop was on the ground.
