Real justice, not poetic

Ten years in prison for everyone present. Felony murder charges all around. A place on the nofly list. These are among the criminal and associated penalties being bandied about by elected officials and other Americans frightened and angry over the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters.

It stands to reason. The goal of many violent Capitol invaders was apparently to overthrow the government in one way or another, whether by intimidating Congress into tossing out valid election results, by kidnapping or killing members, or by otherwise usurping lawmakers’ power and keeping Trump’s term from ending. If punishment should fit the crime, and if the crimes included domestic terrorism, insurrection and murder, or plotting to commit more such offenses, it is fair to demand that the nation act decisively to protect itself by imposing criminal sanctions that are sufficiently tough to hold perpetrators to account.

But only the actual perpetrators. And only with appropriate sanctions.

One presidential order to increase sentences grew out of last summer’s widespread protests against police violence. Using the same order against the pro-Trump mob would seem like poetic justice.

But we should be concerned with actual justice, not just the poetic kind. The U.S. is struggling to shake off decades of gratuitous and inordinate incarceration. If a 10-year term for a person spray-painting a statue outside a courthouse or in a town square is absurd in its excess—and it most certainly is— then so is a similar sentence for a person vandalizing a statue in the Capitol.

Exercising the right to assemble and the right to speak is fraught with hazard, and in the heat of the moment, it is possible to cross the lines that separate protest from petty crime and petty crime from felony. But the government’s job should be to identify and respect those lines, not to further blur them by punishing all for the actions of a few, or by excessively punishing offenders because we’re scared of them.

Enforcement must be targeted, and punishment must be measured. To act otherwise would be to relinquish the very liberties that criminals and terrorists seek to destroy.