The first rioter to enter the Capitol building during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack was on Tuesday sentenced to just under four and a half years in prison for his role in the riot.
Michael Sparks, 47, of Kentucky, was convicted by a federal jury on six counts in March, including interfering with police and obstructing Congress from certifying the 2020 election results.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly dismissed the count charging Sparks with obstruction of an official proceeding at prosecutors’ request earlier this month, following a Supreme Court ruling in June that narrowed use of the charge in Jan. 6 cases. But on Tuesday, the judge said that, for purposes of sentencing, he found obstructing the certification was Sparks’s intent.
The judge ordered 53 months of incarceration, plus $2,000 in restitution to the Architect of the Capitol. The sentence significantly departed from federal sentencing guidelines, which called for a sentence of 15 to 21 months in prison. A probation officer recommended 21 months of incarceration, Kelly said.
When Sparks addressed the judge, he solemnly said he still believes the 2020 presidential election was “taken” and that America is “in tyranny,” but said it “never was my intention” to harm law enforcement or force a confrontation.
“That’s not who I am,” Sparks said.
Video footage from Jan. 6 showed Sparks jumping through a shattered Capitol window shortly after another rioter, Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola, busted it open. When he entered the Capitol, he came face-to-face with U.S. Capitol Police Sergeant Victor Nichols.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Allen said Tuesday that, if not for Nichols’s “heroic choice” to refrain from using his weapon, Sparks’s entry could have spurred a “deadly tragedy.”
Before addressing the court with a victim impact statement, Nichols wiped tears from his eyes. He urged the judge to hold Sparks accountable for setting off a “chain reaction” that day by entering the Capitol first. What followed Sparks’s entry to the building was a “wave of chaos,” the police sergeant said.
Kelly said Sparks’s status as the first rioter in the building had an “emboldening, encouraging effect” on others. He noted video footage showing at least one rioter hesitating to enter until after Sparks did.
“You went through, and he went through, and many, many more went through,” Kelly said.
Prosecutors pointed to that same footage as proof that Sparks gave a “greenlight” to the other rioters to enter the building.
“Mr. Sparks was the test,” Allen said. “He made it in safely, so the rest did indeed follow.”
But Sparks attorney Scott Wendelsdorf called any assertion that the rioter was a leader a “fantasy.” He contended that, unlike other rioters at the Capitol that day, Sparks “literally quit the protest” when it became apparent that then-Vice President Pence would not declare Trump the election’s winner.
Prosecutors sought 57 months in prison for Sparks, whom they said “helped light the fire” that day and prepared with protective body armor to brace against officers attempting to push back the mob.
Sparks was one of several rioters U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman later steered away from the Senate chamber, where lawmakers were still sheltering in place, as they chased him. Goodman testified during Sparks’s trial that the rioter was among the most concerning in the group due to his volume and “in-your-face attitude.”
Sparks left the Capitol soon after Pence was evacuated through a hallway just yards away from where the rioter stood off with police, prosecutors said. The rioter’s proximity to those officials played a role in his sentencing, Kelly said, in addition to a “lack of full remorse.”
Wendelsdorf, Sparks’s attorney, asked the judge to sentence Sparks to a year of home incarceration. He blamed a “disingenuous but effective campaign” by former President Trump and his allies to convince Sparks and other supporters that the 2020 presidential election was stolen for the conduct at the Capitol. In filings, he noted that Sparks is still a “follower” of the former president.
“Mr. Sparks believed his president and traveled to Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, to protest what he had been told was a stolen election — not by engaging in physical violence against police or members of Congress, but by supporting, encouraging, and enabling what he had been told and in good faith believed was Vice President Pence’s constitutional duty to reverse the election results and declare Trump president,” Wendelsdorf wrote in Sparks’s sentencing memorandum.
Sparks was arrested on Jan. 19, 2021, and first indicted on Feb. 5, 2021, followed by a superseding indictment in November of the same year.
In all, more than 1,400 rioters across the country have been charged for their actions on Jan. 6.
Updated 2:38 p.m.