Soviet style justice in Jan 6 sentence
I stipulate that judges have discretion in sentencing and don't have to go along with the prosecution's recommendation. That being said ,Justice Tanya Chutkan's sentence of Matthew Mazzocco is an unjust poltically motivated travesty that violates the spirit of the 8th amendment .
Mazzocco plead guilty to “parading, demonstrating, or picketing” in the Capitol without authorization during the Jan. 6 riot..... a misdemeanor charge Prosecution recommended 3 months of home confinement .Chutkan imposed a 45 day jail sentence.
Is he a threat ? Does he have priors ? No . The FBI statement indicates that he was trying to be a calming influence urging others to not take or destroy anything .
In her comments she revealed that her decision was a political one . She justified the Floyd riots of the summer of 2020(“People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man—some of those protests became violent,” ) but suggested that the Jan 6 riot was an attempted insurrection (not true) and that was his reason for participating . .....“to compare the actions of people protesting mostly peacefully for civil rights to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores the very real danger that the Jan. 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.”
Such rhetoric is ok for political debates on discussion forums . But to use such over the top CNN parroting pabulum as justification for excessively harsh sentencing reeks of political prosecution and a show trial worthy of a scene from Alice in Wonderland .