The sentence for the defendant, Albuquerque Cosper Head, was one of the most severe penalties handed down so far in the Justice Department’s investigation of the Capitol attack.
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A mob surrounding the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
A Tennessee man was sentenced on Thursday to seven and a half years in prison for dragging a police officer protecting the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, into an angry pro-Trump crowd that brutally assaulted the officer.
The man, Albuquerque Cosper Head, pleaded guilty in March to assaulting the officer, Michael Fanone, who has emerged as an outspoken advocate for the officers who were subjected to the mob violence on Jan. 6. The sentence was one of the most severe penalties handed down so far in the Justice Department’s investigation of the Capitol attack.
As part of his plea, Mr. Head, a 43-year-old construction worker, admitted that during the violence outside the Capitol, he grabbed Mr. Fanone around the neck and told the crowd around him, “I got one!” Mr. Head then forcibly hauled Mr. Fanone down the Capitol steps and into the mob, where he was beaten, kicked and attacked with a stun gun.
Some in the crowd tried to strip Mr. Fanone of his service weapon as one rioter threatened to kill him with his own gun.
Appearing as a witness at a sentencing hearing in Federal District Court in Washington, Mr. Fanone, who has since left the police force, told Judge Amy Berman Jackson that he wanted Mr. Head to face the maximum penalty for the assault. He added that he wanted Judge Jackson to show Mr. Head the same amount of mercy that Mr. Head had shown him on Jan. 6, saying that was “none.”
The 90-month sentence Judge Jackson handed down was slightly less than the 96 months that prosecutors had requested. In court papers, prosecutors called Mr. Head’s attack on Mr. Fanone “some of the most barbaric violence on Jan. 6.”
Apparently agreeing, Judge Jackson excoriated Mr. Head from the bench, calling the assault “horrific” and telling the defendant that his case was one of the most serious Jan. 6 criminal matters that she had handled.
Judge Jackson told Mr. Head that he had treated Mr. Fanone as his “prey” and as a “trophy” by bragging aloud as he grabbed the officer around his neck and essentially displayed him to crowd.
“He was protecting the very essence of democracy, the peaceful transfer of power after a democratic election,” Judge Jackson said of Mr. Fanone. “He was protecting America.”
As she has done before at sentencing hearings, Judge Jackson warned that lies about the 2020 election continue to be spread across the country and that even now some supporters of former President Donald J. Trump have turned their anger toward the officers who were protecting the Capitol on Jan. 6, not the rioters who stormed it.
“The dark shadow of tyranny unfortunately has not gone away,” she said. “Some people are directing their vitriol at Officer Fanone and not at the people who summoned the mob in the first place.”
Last month, one of Mr. Head’s co-defendants, Kyle Young, was sentenced to 86 months in prison for taking part in the assault on Mr. Fanone. Mr. Young had admitted to using a strobe light to disorient the police and then to grabbing Mr. Fanone’s wrist, restraining him as he was set upon by the mob.
Source: nytimes.com
