Florida man Paul Hodgkins received an 8-month prison term on Monday after he pleaded guilty to breaching the Senate chamber during the US Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021 (article available here).
Hodgkins faced sentencing guidelines of 15 to 21 months in prison after pleading guilty to one count of obstructing an official proceeding. Prosecutors noted Hodgkins does not rank among the more than 100 people charged with assaulting or resisting law enforcement on January 6.
He apologized and said he was ashamed of his actions. “If I had any idea that the protest ... would escalate (the way) it did ... I would never have ventured farther than the sidewalk of Pennsylvania Avenue,” Hodgkins told the judge. He added: “This was a foolish decision on my part.”
The sentence is less than the 1.5-year sentence that the Justice Department asked for. Hodgkins was seeking probation. The court found that although Hodgkins contributed to a grave offense against democracy, he deserved some leniency because he pleaded guilty "exceptionally early" in the process and was not involved in any of the violence on January 6.
Nearly 550 rioters have been charged overall, and the Justice Department says at least 230 of them have been charged with the same obstruction crime to which Hodgkins pleaded guilty.
The first person sentenced for a misdemeanor offense on the U.S. Capitol breach docket, 49-year-old Anna Morgan-Lloyd, received a non-jail sentence and a stern warning by a federal judge not to violate probation.