Wow, it has been a while since I have written a blog entry. In fact,
it has been a year, and I have a lot to fill you in on. But let's get down to
what I covered via Tweets recently -- the insurrectionist Trial of Dustin
Thompson, of Ohio, who entered into the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021,
and stole first a bottle of booze and then a coat rack from the office of the
Senate Parliamentarian.
Yesterday Thompson was convicted on all six criminal counts the
Department of Justice had charged him with. There have now been about a half
dozen January 6th insurrectionists (many call them rioters) who have been
convicted following a trial. About 170 have already plead guilty.
Growing up in central
Ohio, Thompson was originally a libertarian with moderate political views
overall. According to his wife Sarah, the two met when they were both students
at Ohio State University, Thompson had a double major of history and
psychology. Sarah, a democrat, was a fashion merchandising major and went directly into
working in the clothing retail industry.
Thompson graduated about
a semester after Sarah did, and he worked for several years at a pawn shop.
Then he was hired by his first exterminator job and worked there for a couple of
years. And then he worked for a second extermination company. The two were
married in January 2020.
During Trump's
presidency, Sarah testified that her boyfriend and then husband moved further
to the right politically. He apparently identified with Trump, who was often
beset by criticism from the media, Democrats, and sometimes fellow
Republicans.
Three months after the
two were married, Thompson was laid off. He testified that it was due to lack
of business due to the burgeoning Covid-19 pandemic. It was March and his
depression began. He felt isolated, being in quarantine, and spent hundreds of hours trolling the Internet.
"It was then that I
began latching onto conspiracy theories," he said in court. And he began
to listen very closely to what his president, who he was now an ardent supporter
of, was saying about the upcoming election.
Under Sarah's
cross-examination on the witness stand she said she personally had no interest
in going to the January 6th Save America Rally herself. However, "I knew
what this rally was all about, and I supported his right to attend." She
admitted she made the hotel reservation for Thompson at the Hampton Inn in
Silver Spring, Maryland on the border of D.C. And, she said she has known
Robert Lyon, Thompson's friend, for a number of years who travelled to the rally
with him
Lyon who did not enter
the U.S. Capitol on that inauspicious day, has already plead guilty to a couple
charges in an agreement with the government a few weeks ago. He is scheduled to
be sentenced in July.
Unlike his friend,
Thompson did enter the Capitol Building and not just once, but twice. His first
trip in, he stole a bottle of bourbon from the Senate Parliamentarian's Office.
On his second trip to the same locale, he nicked a wood and brass coat rack.
And, unlike Lyon, he chose to plead not guilty.
In the evening of January 6th, as the two Ohio compadres considered how to get back to the Hampton Inn with their "trophy" coat rack (the liquor is not mentioned again -- as maybe it was consumed) they were confronted by a couple Capitol Hill Police officers, as they remained inside the restricted area on Capitol Hill. One of the prosecution's witnesses was Jennifer O'Neil, one of the two officers who confronted the pair shortly after 6:00pm. It was at this time that Thompson, as he admitted under cross-examination, fearing arrest for criminal behavior decided to flee on foot, leaving the trophy at the scene on South Capitol Street. Lyon did not flee.
A couple of weeks later, soon after he first tried to reach out to the FBI, effectively turning himself in (by then he had been identified), he chose to hire his attorney, Samuel Shamansky.
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| The Senate Parliamentarian's office on the evening of January 6, 2021. Credit Newsweek. |
On Thursday, April 14th, around 3:30pm the jury of six Black
folks, four White folks, an Asian person, and a Hispanic person (a rather good
demographic reflection of DC), and six women and six men returned with the
verdict. After about two and a half hours of deliberation, the jury returned
the ruling of guilty on all six counts. One of the five is a felony,
obstruction of an official proceeding, and all but requires jail time.
Judge Reggie Walton, a Bush appointee, according to a seasoned D.C. lawyer friend of
mine has a reputation of hard and long sentencing. He said he did not find any
of Thompson's testimony to be honest or candid, and the way he spoke before the
court "did not seem sincere."
After the jury cleared
the room, Judge Walton spoke to Shamansky and Thompson, "I have some
rather serious concerns... This was an insurgency, and our Democracy is in
trouble."
Although the
prosecution was fine with a release on bond pending sentencing, Judge Walton
was not satisfied without that scenario, and ruled that Walton would await
sentencing in D.C. Jail. A few words were quietly exchanged between client and
counsellor, and then a bailiff approached, and the would-be insurrectionist
emptied his pockets; a wallet, a pack of cigarettes, and a few other small
items. He then removed his tie and his belt. And finally he turned around, and
the court guard handcuffed his hands behind his back and led him to a door in
the rear of the courtroom.
Of the approximately
190 who have been convicted and/or sentenced about 25 have been felonies, the
rest have been misdemeanors. The harshest sentence yet, five years in prison,
was doled out in December to Robert Palmer, a 54-year-old Florida man. He was
the one seen in videos spraying police on January 6th with a fire extinguisher,
and then once it was empty hurling it at them.
As he ordered Thompson
to remain detained until his sentencing date, Judge Walton commented, "As
my mother used to stay, 'you made me your bed and now you must lie in
it.'"
"I am disturbed
by how gullible so many people are, and I do think the former president is a
charlatan," Judge Walton said. "But I find [Mr. Thompson's] behavior
reprehensible."
The trial of Dustin
Thompson was the first January 6th trial that employed a 'Trump Made Me Do
It" defense strategy. Shamansky had vigorously tried to get the court to
accept the former president to testify, but Judge Walton ultimately rejected the
defense motion.
“I don’t think we want individuals to feel they can listen to anybody and go out and commit a criminal act and say, well, I was told I could do it,” Walton said.
Shamansky did not stop there, during his closing argument, he played the entire 70-minute speech Trump delivered the morning of January 6th. The jurors looked bored and shifted uncomfortably in their chairs, one even kept her eyes shut part of this time, and for the rest she was looking off to the side away from the screen. And Judge Walton during this replay of the former president's diatribe repeatedly looked at his smartphone.
Shamansky,
however, during the trial repeatedly tried to place the blame on Trump. Oddly,
it was as if the defense was attempting to entirely reframe the trial, as if
Thompson were a witless victim, rather than the accused perpetrator.
On
cross-examination, prosecutor William Dreher pressed Thompson to accept
culpability for his own actions.
"You
are not a child?" Dreher asked the Defendant.
"No."
"You
are an adult?"
"Yes."
"This
morning, you got yourself dressed, and got yourself to court?"
"Yes."
"You
are aware of the concept of stealing, and you know it is illegal?"
"Yes."
A little later,
"You fled from Officer O'Neil the evening of the 6th, because you were
afraid you would be arrested because of what you did that day?"
"Yes."
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| Dustin Thompson and his lawyer Samuel Shamansky enter the Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington. Credit CTV News. |
That
cross-examination, in addition to the wealth of evidence solidly proving that
Thompson went into the capitol twice, stole the two items, and remained within
a restricted area for hours was all stipulated (not contested as fact) to by defense
sealed his conviction.
After the verdict was delivered
by the jury foreperson, and the 38-year-old married man from Ohio was led out
of the courtroom to a detainment cell, I tried to imagine his life before he
came to D.C. in January 2021, and what his life would be like after his conviction.
Like so many pulled into Trump's traitorous Big Lie, Alex Jones' fantastical delusions, or Q Anon's wildly grandiose and out of this world conspiracies -- or all three -- what leads individuals, such as Dustin Thompson, to commit criminal acts against their better judgment as adults, like they did on January 6, 2021? The answer is not clear to me, but luckily this defense of escaping culpability by blaming a dastardly and powerful authority figure utterly failed on April 14, 2022.
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