Jan. 6 rioter deserved pity, not scorn
Depending upon how you feel about Jan. 6, whether it was an insurrection or a riot, whether the people who took part in it were traitors or patriots, whether it was a serious threat to democracy or the aberrational exception to a mostly peaceful protest, we can at least agree on this: The suicide of Matthew Perna is tragic. Full stop.
And if we cannot agree on that point, it is probably better for you to put down this paper or click off this website and seek therapy for that recent diagnosis of Empathy Deficit Disorder (it’s a real thing, look it up.)
Perna was the Pennsylvania man who was involved in what I have called for over a year, the Capitol riot. I call it that because that’s exactly what it was: a riot at the U.S. Capitol. To me it was not a legitimate protest of citizens who believed, wrongly, that an election was stolen.
In her column published at American Greatness, author Julie Kelly provides significant background into Perna’s particular case. It is established that the Sharpsville, Pa., native showed up in D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021 and walked through an open door on the Senate side of the capitol building. Police surveillance shows that he was not stopped as he and hundreds of others made their way into the building. He was wearing a “Make America Great Again” sweatshirt, spent about 20 minutes inside, and then left.
After discovering about a week and a half later that he was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, he contacted law enforcement to voluntarily submit to questioning. He was ultimately indicted by a grand jury on what were misdemeanor counts of trespass and obstruction of an official proceeding. He pleaded guilty on the advice of counsel, and initially expected to receive a sentence of about a year or less. However, Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia who is coordinating all Jan. 6 prosecutions, asked to have Perna’s sentencing delayed, foreshadowing an effort to get him a much heavier sentence. Graves has been seeking sentences in excess of four to five years, and has described the defendants as “domestic terrorists,” making no distinction between those charged with felonies and those, like Perna, charged with misdemeanors.
When he realized that he might be facing years in prison, and after months of being treated like a pariah in his hometown, Matthew Perna took his own life. He hung himself in his garage last week.
I know it’s difficult, but for a moment, I would ask you to put aside your politics. Forget who you voted for in November 2020. Try to remember what life was like before Donald Trump came on the scene in 2015, announcing his candidacy and creating a San Andreas Fault in our society.
Given my own personal history, I am particularly devastated by the suicide of a 37-yearold man with his life ahead of him. Matthew Perna made the mistake of walking through a door that never should have been opened in the first place, and in aligning himself with people who in many cases had the worst of all intentions. The grand jury that indicted him on misdemeanor — not felony — charges would likely agree with me.
No one forces anyone to take his own life, but we should be vigilant in recognizing those who are struggling, and not be cruel to those who are so obviously fragile. An entire Pennsylvania town condemned one of its sons to death, for a misdemeanor offense, and he decided to simply complete the act. They did not form the noose or hold the rope, but they did nothing to hold him back.
More than this, though, we are living through a vengeful moment. For all of our concern with the “inequities” in the criminal justice system constantly criticized by progressive D.A.s and “defund the police” activists, there seems to be little if any concern for the excesses and inequities in the treatment of the Jan. 6 defendants. Matthew Perna should not have been facing the prospect of years in jail for a misdemeanor offense, even if that misdemeanor brought him close to what many call an insurrection.
More importantly, he should not have been hounded to death by a town, and a system that is itself suffering from Empathy Deficit Disorder, and a lack of humanity.