An Athens man convicted last year of a felony and two misdemeanors for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol was sentenced to 18 months probation rather than the years in prison prosecutors had requested.
Jake Maxwell, 23, was found guilty of felony civil disorder and two misdemeanors following a two-day nonjury trial in Washington, D.C., last November, but his sentencing was delayed multiple times throughout this year as his defense team argued with prosecutors and tried — unsuccessfully — to get U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon to reconsider his verdict.
Prosecutors had sought a prison term of four years and seven months for Maxwell to be followed by three years of probation. Instead, Leon sided with Maxwell’s defense team and sentenced him to probation, 120 hours of community service and fines.
According to federal prosecutors, Maxwell was at the front of a violent mob that fought with police and pushed through barricades on the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol. During the scrum, prosecutors said Maxwell pushed against the riot shield of a police officer and hooked his arm around the baton of another before he was pulled back by his father.
Maxwell did not enter the Capitol, but he stayed for hours while others in the crowd fought with police in a tunnel near the stage set up for Joe Biden’s inauguration. One of the photographs used as evidence in trial shows Maxwell on the Capitol steps alongside the inaugural stage waving an American flag amid the chaos below.
Credit: U.S. Department of Justice
Credit: U.S. Department of Justice
Prosecutors had asked Leon to sentence Maxwell to four years and seven months in prison to be followed by three years’ probation. Maxwell’s lawyers asked for probation only, citing his clean criminal record before his arrest and his standing in the community as a “truthful, peaceful and law-abiding citizen.”
Maxwell has never conceded that he is guilty of the charges brought against him. However, according to a defense memo, Maxwell accepted that he was responsible for being at the Capitol and “should have known his presence … was improper.”
Along with civil disorder, investigators charged Maxwell with two counts of assaulting police during a massive melee between rioters and police officers on the Lower West Terrace outside the Capitol.
FBI investigators said footage from police-worn body cameras showed Maxwell pushing against the riot shield of a Capitol Police officer. The charging documents claim Maxwell “got into a physical struggle” with a Metro D.C. Police officer and attempted to take away his baton. However, Maxwell’s attorneys said their client was pushed by rioters around him into the police line and that his contact with police was against his will.
“He wasn’t assaulting anybody, any police officers,” defense attorney Michael van der Veen told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution following Maxwell’s trial. “The crowd was getting out of control.”
Leon found Maxwell not guilty of the assault charges and two of the misdemeanors after determining that it was possible that he was pushed by other rioters rather than launching himself at the police.
In a brief filed with the court, Maxwell’s lawyers argued that his conduct on Jan. 6 was “most analogous to the crime of trespass” and that he should be sentenced along those lines. The attorneys accused prosecutors of “attempting to back door” a harsher sentence more appropriate for the assault charges.
Along with van der Veen, Maxwell’s defense team included attorney William J. Brennan. Both lawyers were part of Donald Trump’s legal representation during his second Senate impeachment trial in which Trump was charged with inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection. Trump was acquitted in that Senate trial after a majority of senators found him guilty of inciting the riot, but not the two-thirds majority needed to convict him.
