(MENAFN- Trend News Agency) A Pennsylvania man found guilty of felony assault and other
charges for pepper-spraying Police officers outside the US Capitol
was sentenced on Friday to 14 years behind bars, the longest prison
term to date for anyone convicted in the riot of Jan. 6, 2021,
trend reports
citing al
arabiya .
Peter J. Schwartz, 49, was convicted last December at a trial in
federal court where evidence showed he was in the vanguard of a mob
attacking police at the lower west terrace of the Capitol and
boasted later that he had“started a riot” by“throwing the first
chair.”
Prosecutors said Schwartz then seized a police duffle bag full
of pepper-spray canisters and handed them out to others in the mob,
including his wife, so they could turn them against police
officers.
According to the government's case, Schwartz began chasing down
any retreating officers he could find and dousing them with pepper
spray as he surged through the crowd into the lower west terrace
tunnel wielding a wooden club.
A welder by trade, Schwartz was arrested in early February in
his hometown of Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
Schwartz and two co-defendants, Jeffrey Scott Brown and Markus
Maly, became the first three individuals convicted at trial of
assaulting police officers with pepper spray on Jan. 6.
Brown, of Santa Ana, California, was sentenced last month to 4
1/2 years in prison. Maly, of Fincastle, Virginia, is awaiting
sentencing. Schwartz's wife, Shelly Stallings, received a two-year
prison term last month.
Schwartz was found guilty on four counts of assault with a
dangerous weapon and six other charges, including obstructing an
official proceeding, entering a restricted building with a
dangerous weapon and engaging in physical violence in a restricted
building.
His 170-month prison term surpasses the previous longest
sentence yet handed down in a case related to the Jan. 6 attack -
10 years received by former New York City cop Thomas Webster for
assaulting a Washington police officer that day.
Schwartz's punishment may soon be eclipsed. The US Justice
Department on Friday asked a federal judge to sentence Oath Keepers
founder Stewart Rhodes to 25 years in prison for his conviction on
seditious conspiracy and other charges stemming from the Jan. 6
riot.
On Thursday, a federal court jury convicted four members of
another far-right extremist group, the Proud Boys, of seditious
conspiracy, defined under a Civil War-era law as a plot to oppose
the government with force.
At least 950 people have been charged and more than 600
convicted for their roles in the Capitol rampage by supporters of
then-President Donald Trump. The Jan. 6 attack marked the most
violent assault on the halls of Congress since the British invasion
of Washington during the War of 1812.
Trump had urged his followers in a speech that day to“fight
like hell” to disrupt congressional certification of Democrat Joe
Biden's 2020 presidential election victory, a race the Republican
incumbent has continued to falsely claim was stolen by massive
fraud.
Schwartz's lawyers appealed for leniency, saying their client
and his wife had traveled to Washington to hear Trump's speech and
walked to the Capitol with other protesters without intending in
advance to incite violence.
Defense attorneys said in court documents that Schwartz's
actions that day“were motivated by a misunderstanding as to the
facts surrounding the 2020 election.”