A California man who attacked police officers at the Capitol Building in Washington DC on January 6th, 2021, in a sustained assault with his hands, his feet, a flagpole, crutches, pepper spray and broken pieces of furniture was sentenced on Friday to 20 years in prison - one of the stiffest penalties issued in more than four years of prosecutions of the rioters.
The man, David Dempsey, was so aggressive that at one point he assaulted a fellow rioter who was trying to disarm him. Dempsey, described by prosecutors as a former construction worker and fast-food employee with a “very significant history of arrests,” also stood beside a gallows outside the building and called for the hanging of prominent Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former US president Barack Obama.
“Dempsey was one of the most violent rioters, during one of the most violent stretches of time, at the scene of the most violent confrontations at the Capitol,” prosecutors wrote in court papers filed this month.
The only rioter to have faced more time in prison than Dempsey so far is Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, who was sentenced in September to 22 years in prison after being convicted on charges of seditious conspiracy. Dempsey’s 20-year term was higher than the sentences handed down to one of Tarrio’s lieutenants, Joseph Biggs, who was given 17 years, and to Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, who is serving an 18-year term.
Prosecutors say that Dempsey, who pleaded guilty to assault in January, climbed atop other rioters at the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol, using them like “human scaffolding” to get at the officers protecting the entrance to a tunnel there.
His attacks on the officers were “relentless,” prosecutors wrote in court papers, and included “swinging pole-like weapons more than 20 times, spraying chemical agents at least three times, hurling objects at officers at least 10 times, stomping on the heads of police officers as he perched above them five times, attempting to steal a riot shield and baton, and incessantly hurling threats and insults at police while rallying other rioters to join his onslaught.”
The 20-year term was handed down at a hearing in US District Court in Washington by Judge Royce C. Lamberth, a Republican appointee who has assailed some of Donald Trump’s supporters for seeking to play down the events of January 6th.
“I have been shocked to watch some public figures try to rewrite history, claiming rioters behaved ‘in an orderly fashion’ like ordinary tourists, or martyrising convicted January 6th defendants as ‘political prisoners’ or even, incredibly, ‘hostages,’” Lamberth wrote in January in court papers connected to another riot case.
“That is all preposterous,” he added. “But the court fears that such destructive, misguided rhetoric could presage further danger to our country.”
Prosecutors say Dempsey’s involvement in the Capitol attack was only his latest act of political violence.
In 2019, he was arrested on charges of dousing anti-Trump protesters in Santa Monica, California, with bear spray and also attacked a protester in Los Angeles with a skateboard, but was never charged, prosecutors say.
The following year, court papers say, Dempsey twice attacked demonstrators at political protests - once with a skateboard again and once with a metal bat.
More than 1,450 people have been charged so far in connection with the Capitol attack, and prosecutors have secured more than 1,000 convictions or guilty pleas. About 560 defendants have been sentenced to at least some time behind bars.
- This article originally appeared in The New York Times