Yesterday, Peter Francis Stager was sentenced to 52 months in federal prison for the beating of police officer Blake Miller at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. In one of the most disturbing videos taken during the insurrection, the 44 year-old Conway, Arkansas man is seen repeatedly beating Miller with a flag pole while, according to prosecutors, he “lay facedown in the mob of rioters with no means of defending himself.”
The crime to which Stager pled guilty carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Prosecutors recommended Stager be sentenced to six and a half years and a fine of $31,000 (equivalent to funds Stager’s wife raised through a GoFundMe account). However, his defense team countered, claiming their client was a victim of circumstances, beginning at birth. In a filing before the Federal District Court, they wrote Stager’s mother abandoned him at age six, he slept under benches and stole food from stores before ending up in foster care. They did not stop there. Explaining his presence at the Capitol on January 6, they wrote:
After delivering the load of produce he was transporting nearby, he made the choice not to drive back to Arkansas empty due to the cost of fuel and the fact that he would not be making money on an empty load. Mr. Stager then decided to make the most of the situation and watch the speech of outgoing President Trump the next day; this decision is one that Mr. Stager will regret for the rest of his life.
The sentencing memorandum summarized this “unlucky” coincidence as “a scheduling conflict with his dispatch.” Having spent more than 15 years living in the D.C. metropolitan area, I am pretty sure there are numerous ways to kill time in the Nation’s capital other than participating in a violent insurrection.
Someone should remind his legal counsel Stager was not charged with attending the rally. He was charged with the malicious beating and injury of a member of the Washington, D.C. police department. His lawyers told Judge Rudolph Contreras that Stager did not know Miller was a police office although the words “METROPOLITAN POLICE” appeared on the back of his uniform as he lay face down. And, although Stager claimed the assault on the Capitol “seemed like a big family reunion,” prosecutors presented another video, in which he shouts:
Everybody in there is a disgrace. That entire building is filled with treasonous traitors. Death is the only remedy for what’s in that building. Every single one of those Capitol law enforcement officers, death is the remedy, that is the only remedy they get.
Hardly the words of a man who sent a written apology to officer Miller claiming:
I never had any intent or thought of going into the Capitol or that I was going to be engaged in a angry manner. I don’t have hatred for law enforcement let alone for anyone in my heart.
The judge gave Mr. Stager a break because of the circumstances of his upbringing. A broken nuclear family. Homelessness. As well as the “chance” circumstances which brought him to Washington, D.C. on the day of the insurrection. There is a phrase for that. It’s called “affirmative action.” As of the recent Supreme Court decision, “affirmative action” is no longer a reason to offer a Black American four years at an institution of higher learning. But it can limit the time a white insurrectionist spends at another kind of institution.
POSTSCRIPT
We do need to recognize the creative genius of the lawyers representing these January 6 defendants. According to a report in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, “Stager’s attorney said someone was injured or dying on the Capitol steps and Stager was trying to get police to help them.” A new take on the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which Stager is both the villain and hero, beating the victim within an inch of his life before showing him mercy.
For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP