Millersville man sentenced for attack
Proud Boys leader who beat officers on Jan. 6 gets more than 5 years in prison
A Proud Boys leader from Millersville who beat police officers during the attacks on the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced Friday to 5½ years in prison.
The punishment was the largest rendered against a Jan. 6 defendant by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who has presided over several criminal cases stemming from the insurrection — an event she called the “most consequential and serious in our country’s history,” one that has “created great divides and will continue to.”
Issuing her decision Friday in Washington, the judge alluded to “the level of aggression” displayed by Scott Thomas Miller at the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, a tunnel where some of the most violent confrontations between rioters and law enforcement took place. During the hourslong barricade, Miller, 33, struck officers with metal and wooden poles, threw objects at them and ripped a riot shield away, handing it off to another protester before slipping into the crowd.
Miller pleaded guilty in January to a felony charge of assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers using a dangerous weapon. Based on sentencing guidelines, Miller faced 57 to 71 months in prison, with prosecutors advocating for the highest possibility and the defense seeking no more than two years.
Though Miller and his attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender Elizabeth Mullin, attempted to argue he had not planned to go to the Capitol, doing so at the last minute “to join the energy” of the day, Chutkan said he went to Washington specifically “to join the fray.”
Referring to the tunnel, the judge told Miller, “you went straight there…and the whole time you were fighting.”
Miller’s conduct before, during and after the attack was described by Chutkan, Mullin, prosecutors and even his wife, as both “disgusting” and “shocking.”
In a sentencing memorandum, Miller said he joined the fascist group while “looking for a community.”
And during his time in its ranks, he spoke repeatedly of violence, collected Nazi memorabilia as well as a library of internet memes displaying, among other racial attacks, hatred toward Jews and a “solution” to their presence. Prosecutors said on Jan. 6, 2021, the Proud Boys also shared in a text chain a list of Jewishowned stores in Washington D.C — showing a “direct line between [Miller’s] beliefs and his violence.”
Mullin attempted to explain Miller’s extremism demonstrated “the dangers of groupthink” and said his 2021 departure from the Proud Boys as well as his active involvement in church showed “he continues to evolve.”
However, reflecting on the exhibits submitted by the government — including one meme in which a character proclaimed all children would have to be killed before he would support gun control — Chutkan said she was skeptical someone with such fanatical beliefs could transform so quickly.
“They don’t just arrive there by some random algorithm,” the judge said.
Chutkan, who was appointed to the district bench in 2013 by President Barack Obama, is also overseeing former President Donald Trump’s election interference case brought by the Department of Justice following the insurrection.
Whereas a jury was chosen this week for Trump’s hush money trial in New York, a
start date for his prosecution in Washington has been stalled until the Supreme Court decides whether the former president has “absolute immunity” from his charges. Arguments in that case are expected to be heard Thursday and a decision will likely be made by the end of June.
Whether the Supreme Court allows Trump’s interference case to continue, Chutkan has demonstrated her belief that the Jan. 6 attacks ought to be handled with severity in court, as such an event, she warned, could happen again.
“Extremism is alive and well in this country,” Chutkan said.
While prosecutors relayed example after example of Miller’s bigotry and “backwards ideology,” including a photo of the defendant smiling next to a news story describing the drowning of migrants, Mullin said
her client began distancing himself “gradually” from the Proud Boys and his extremism as early as February 2021, a month after he went to Washington.
Mullin also pointed to other actions Miller made that day as reasons for a lower sentence.
His decision to go to the Capitol, she argued, was made with minimal planning — a point Chutkan ultimately dismissed, referring to the tactical gear and goggles Miller wore during the raid.
Additionally, Mullin said Miller “did everything he could to help” resuscitate Rosanne Boyland, one of four people who died during the attack, in an effort she said spoke to the former EMT’s true character.
“He had an impulse to help somebody that day,” Mullin said, “an impulse he still has.”
Mullin and Miller’s wife also told the judge that the impending arrival of his firstborn
baby also forced Miller to reconsider his priorities and challenge his beliefs.
Miller himself apologized for his actions at the Capitol — addressing a Metropolitan Police officer who attended Friday’s hearing — and told the judge he is “reforming” himself.
“I recognize now that line of thinking leads people down a bad path,” he said.
Chutkan acknowledged that Miller missing the birth of his child was a harsh punishment for him, his wife and his baby, “who didn’t ask for any of this,” to endure. But she told him, “You have the opportunity to show your family and community… people can change.”
The judge recommended Miller serve his time in the federal correctional institution Schuylkill in Pennsylvania, the closest prison to where his wife is staying.
He will also have to pay $2,000 in restitution.
Chutkan spoke skeptically and sternly to the defendant, saying she believes he was an active participant in the Jan. 6 attack, swayed not by the momentum of a crowd, but by his own desire to fight.
Considering her sentence, she referenced Miller’s 2019 arrest in Anne Arundel County after disrupting a Drag Queen Storytime at the Severna Park Community Library. The case was later placed on the stet, or inactive docket, and was eventually expunged from state records.
Without either a report or a conviction, Chutkan said she was still disturbed by the behavioral pattern shown between 2019 and Jan. 6, 2021.
“I see from your actions that you have a tendency to jump in and cause trouble,” she said and expressed her hope that the love of his family would steer him in a different direction.