Proud Boy Who Smashed Window at Capitol Sentenced to 10 Years

Dominic Pezzola, the rank-and-file member of the Proud Boys who led the cost into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by shattering a window with a stolen police riot defend, was sentenced on Friday to 10 years in jail.

The sentence imposed on Mr. Pezzola was the third to have been handed down this week to 5 members of the far-right group who have been tried in Might for seditious conspiracy and different crimes in one of the crucial vital prosecutions to have emerged from the Capitol assault. It was solely half of the 20 years that the federal government had requested and fewer than the punishment meted out to a number of rioters discovered responsible of assaulting the police.

Mr. Pezzola, a flooring contractor from Rochester, N.Y., was the one one of many 5 males charged within the case who was discovered not responsible of sedition on the trial in Federal District Courtroom in Washington. However the jury convicted him of six different felonies, together with assaulting a police officer, a conspiracy to maintain members of Congress from certifying the election and the destruction of one of many Capitol constructing’s home windows.

Regardless of telling Choose Timothy J. Kelly, who has overseen the Proud Boys sedition case, that he was remorseful and had given up on politics, Mr. Pezzola raised his fist earlier than he was faraway from the courtroom and shouted, “Trump received!”

Video clips of the Jan. 6 assault exhibiting Mr. Pezzola, along with his scraggly beard and wild mane of hair, hammering on the glass with a plastic riot defend, have been a few of the most enduring pictures to have emerged from the Justice Division’s sprawling investigation of the riot. The movies have been prominently featured not solely on the trial, but in addition at public hearings by the Home choose committee that investigated Jan. 6.

Mr. Pezzola’s sentencing within the federal courthouse — which sits close by of the Capitol constructing — got here someday after Choose Kelly, a Trump appointee, imposed a 17-year time period on Joseph Biggs, a former high lieutenant within the far-right group, and handed Zachary Rehl, who as soon as ran the Proud Boys Philadelphia chapter, 15 years in jail.

Choose Kelly is scheduled to condemn Ethan Nordean, a fourth defendant within the case, on Friday afternoon. On Tuesday, at a fifth and closing listening to, the decide is predicted to determine on the punishment for Enrique Tarrio, the previous chairman of the Proud Boys.

The federal government has lengthy maintained that Mr. Pezzola was essentially the most aggressive of the 5 males who went to trial within the conspiracy case, some extent that prosecutors drove dwelling on Friday.

“He was an enthusiastic foot soldier in that conspiracy,” Erik Kenerson, one of many prosecutors, informed Choose Kelly. “And what transpired on Jan. 6 was the kind of political violence that Mr. Pezzola signed up for the Proud Boys to partake in.”

After marching with about 200 different members of the group from the Washington Monument to the Capitol, Mr. Pezzola scuffled with a police officer within the crowd outdoors and made off along with his plastic riot defend. He in the end used that defend to smash a window on the constructing and rush inside with the primary wave of rioters, taking a video of himself smoking what he described as a victory cigar.

The picture of Mr. Pezzola breaking the window crystallized your complete assault on the Capitol, Mr. Kenerson went on.

“He was the literal poster boy of this conspiracy,” he mentioned.

Steven Metcalf, Mr. Pezzola’s lawyer, agreed partially, admitting that his consumer turned infamous weeks earlier than Jan. 6 when The Washington Publish positioned {a photograph} of him on its entrance web page after an earlier pro-Trump rally in Washington.

However Mr. Pezzola was not like the opposite Proud Boys with whom he had been charged, having joined the group weeks earlier than the Capitol assault.

“This can be a Proud Boys management trial,” Mr. Metcalf mentioned, including that to the high-ranking members of the group, Mr. Pezzola was “a no person.”

Addressing the court docket, Mr. Pezzola apologized to his two daughters and to his longtime companion, Lisa Magee, saying, “I’ve damaged this household and crushed your coronary heart.”

He informed Choose Kelly that he was “a modified and humbled man” who had taken duty for his actions on Jan. 6.

“At instances, it looks like I reside in an emotional black gap,” he mentioned.

Then Ms. Magee spoke, detailing all of the methods by which Mr. Pezzola’s case had harmed her and her household. Their daughters had misplaced buddies, she mentioned, and have suffered from harassment and melancholy. She had been unable to seek out work and have become financially “destroyed.”

Choose Kelly responded by acknowledging that Mr. Pezzola was a relative newcomer to the Proud Boys and had been acquitted of seditious conspiracy — essentially the most critical cost within the case.

However he additionally famous that Mr. Pezzola had smashed the window that permit different rioters stream into the Capitol to threaten lawmakers as they have been certifying the election.

“You actually have been in some methods the tip of the spear that allowed individuals to get into the Capitol,” he mentioned.

Whereas Mr. Tarrio and a few of the different Proud Boys within the case have been well-known figures — even celebrities — in right-wing circles lengthy earlier than Jan. 6, Mr. Pezzola was nearly unknown earlier than he took half within the Capitol assault.

A former Marine and novice boxer, he joined the Proud Boys in November 2020, after President Donald J. Trump misplaced the election. He wrote in a journal launched as proof in the course of the trial that he considered the political scenario then as a “battle between good and evil,” requiring patriots to “get up and take again our God-given liberties identical to our Founders did.”

In the course of the trial, Ms. Magee testified on Mr. Pezzola’s behalf, telling the jury that earlier than the unfold of the coronavirus, he was largely tired of politics. However in the course of the pandemic, underneath the affect of Fox Information and heavy ingesting, he turned “consumed” by the nation’s deep divisions, she mentioned.

In a bid to humanize himself, Mr. Pezzola additionally testified, telling jurors that he believed that the police had incited the violence on the Capitol and that his army coaching as an infantryman had merely kicked as he stood within the mob outdoors. However his time on the witness stand shortly turned disastrous as he misplaced his mood and lashed out on the prosecutors making an attempt him, attacking them for conducting what he described as a “corrupt trial” marred by “pretend fees.”

Just like the proceedings on Thursday for Mr. Biggs and Mr. Rehl, Mr. Pezzola’s listening to dwelled on thorny points surrounding what is called a terrorism sentencing enhancement. These provisions can be utilized to extend a defendant’s sentence if prosecutors can present that their actions have been undertaken in an effort to affect “the conduct of presidency by intimidation and coercion.”

Choose Kelly mentioned the enhancement technically utilized to Mr. Pezzola’s case — because it did to these of Mr. Biggs and Mr. Rehl — although he has acknowledged that not one of the Proud Boys engaged in typical acts of terrorism like blowing up buildings or attacking army installations.

As a authorized matter, the enhancement in Mr. Pezzola’s case emerged from his conviction on fees of breaking the window and from his function in trampling a fence that allowed different rioters to surge ahead.

That deeply pissed off his lawyer, Mr. Metcalf, who informed Choose Kelly, “It’s simply ridiculous that that property harm may carry us so far.”