‘NAIVE AND INACCURATE’

Jan. 6 Rioter Who Assaulted Cop Given 46 Months in Prison, Among Longest Sentences Yet

Devlyn Thompson, whose attorney argued hadn’t understood what was transpiring on Jan. 6 as a result of an autism diagnosis, struck an officer with a baton at the Capitol.

A Washington state man involved in assaulting a police officer during the attack on the U.S. Capitol received a sentence of nearly four years on Monday, marking one of the longest sentences yet handed down to a Jan. 6 defendant. Prosecutors said that Devlyn Thompson, 28, struck an officer with a metal baton while helping a mob taking riot shields from law enforcement officials. In handing down the 46-month sentence, only two months less than the request made by the prosecution, Judge Royce Lamberth said that “the attack on the Capitol that day was an attack on the very rule of law in our country.” In court documents, Thompson’s attorney asked for a sentence of one year, suggesting that her client’s diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder had left him with a limited view of what was transpiring around him on Jan. 6. “In contrast to individuals who planned to change the election results by storming the Capitol building with brute force, Mr. Thompson’s understanding of what was happening was naive and inaccurate,” she wrote. Thompson himself apologized in a letter to the court, writing that his behavior had been “inexcusable.”