Jail time is an appropriate sentence for rioters
It was sheer coincidence that Western New York’s fatherand-son rioters were sentenced on the same day that the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection began holding televised hearings. But the coincidence offers an insight: William M. Sywak and his son, William J. Sywak, are fortunate that the American justice system is more merciful than the mob that tried to steal the 2020 presidential election.
That horde broke into the Capitol, intent on intimidating and possibly injuring members of Congress, sent by then-president Trump on a mission to keep him in office, even though his own top lieutenants told him he had lost the election. They injured police officers, vandalized the seat of American government, smeared feces on the walls and left a stain on the 224-year American tradition of peaceful transfer of executive power.
The Sywaks were sentenced to probation.
With COVID-19 still circulating, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras expressed reluctance to incarcerate anyone convicted of a nonviolent misdemeanor.
We take his point, but jail wouldn’t have been unthinkable. These two were part of a violent effort to subvert not only the Constitution, but American democracy itself.
The crowd’s actions were predictably dangerous, a fact that was made clear in Thursday night’s televised hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol. Amid opening statements and dramatic video of the mob assault, two witnesses testified: a documentarian who found himself at key places and Caroline Edwards, a proud Capitol Police officer who was knocked down by the rioters and suffered a traumatic brain injury.
Seventeen months later, she hasn’t been able to return to work. She’s alive, though. Officer Brian D. Sicknick, apparently sprayed in the face with an irritant, suffered two strokes and died one day later. Four other police officers later committed suicide.
This was a deadly insurrection, instigated by an autocratic president and led by two extremist groups, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. And the Sywaks were willing participants.
For that, the younger defendant, known as Billy, was sentenced to a year’s probation with two months of home confinement. His father was placed on two years’ probation plus four months of home confinement and 60 hours of community service. Both were ordered to pay $500 restitution.
They got off easy.