Comment A District man who attacked three police officers and smashed a riot shield with a pole was sentenced to 63 months in prison Tuesday, matching the longest sentence handed down to a defendant convicted of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Mark K. Ponder, 56, admitted that fighting with police in videotaped clashes between 2:31 p.m. and 2:48 p.m. that day in the lower west terrace area of the Capitol, which had been overrun by a violent mob enraged by President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen. Ponder pleaded guilty on April 22 to one count of assaulting a police officer with a dangerous weapon. “He was leading the charge,” said U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, recounting at the sentencing how Ponder smashed a thin pole into an officer’s riot shield so hard that the web broke and the shield shattered, then found a thicker pillar, colored red. , white and blue, and resumed the fighting. “He wasn’t defending himself or anyone else. He was trying to injure these officers and we are lucky [someone] he was not killed with the force with which Mr. Ponder swings those poles,” the judge said. Chutkan imposed a similar 63-month sentence on Robert S. Palmer, 54, of Largo, Fla., who joined the front of the mob and threw a fire extinguisher, board and pole at police. Like Palmer, Ponder was “part of a group that, when they couldn’t get what they wanted, decided they were going to get it. And they were going to meet it with violence,” Chutkan said, saying they felt justified “in attacking law enforcement officers who were just doing their jobs.” Ponder is entitled to his political beliefs, the judge said, but in this case he joined violent extremists in an insurgency that “exposed – and perhaps caused – fissures in our democracy”. Chutkan has emerged as the toughest sentencing judge in riot cases on Capitol Hill and beat back prosecutors’ request to sentence Ponder to five years in prison, the low end of a federal advisory sentence of 57 to 71 months, according to a plea deal. More than 840 suspects were charged in the January 6 Capitol riot. Here’s a breakdown of the charges, convictions and sentences Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn P. Bond said the five-year term was warranted by the seriousness of the offense as well as Ponder’s return to the scene at 4 and 5 p.m. after he was handcuffed and then told to leave by police because the officers were needed to reinforce other parts of the Capitol complex. “Even after the first three attacks, he had a great chance to stop and leave the Capitol,” Bond said. “The fact that Mr. Ponder simply carried on, even when he had the opportunity to choose a different course, does not back down and we believe supports our request.” Former U.S. Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell gave a victim impact statement in person, telling the court as one of the officers struck by Ponder that there is no doubt he understood he was striking officers and “had the will and intent to keep on doing evil.’ US Capitol Police. Aquilino Gonell was among the first to testify at the January 6 panel last July. Since then he has participated in the committee meetings. (Video: The Washington Post) The former sergeant said he took early retirement as a result of the attack, was left with mental and physical scars and that “my family has suffered, emotionally and financially.” Gonell told Chutkan that Ponder’s claim that he was “caught up” in violence “is BS, and please don’t fall for him.” “It’s changed my life,” said Gonell, a 16-year police veteran who served with the U.S. Army in Iraq. Gonell op-ed: The government we defended last January has a duty to hold all perpetrators accountable Ponder asked for leniency, saying that while like Palmer he had a criminal record, he had been a “changed person in the last 12 years” since his release from prison after convictions for bank robbery and armed robbery. “I never meant for this to happen. I went there with the intention of doing a peaceful protest,” Ponder said. However, he said he was “not thinking” after being pepper sprayed by police and after the tension and anger in the crowd sparked by the former president erupted into “chaos”. “I’m not saying I’m completely innocent of this – I’m not. I am very sorry for what happened to this officer and all the other officers that day,” Ponder told the judge. “I’m not asking for justice… I’m asking for mercy.” Defense attorney Joseph R. Conte added that Ponder, a lifelong resident of the Washington area, had overcome a cocaine addiction and prior to Jan. 6 had had no contact with police since his incarceration. Ponder was the product of a broken home and suffered abuse as a child “as severe as any I’ve seen in my career,” Conte said, to which Chutkan replied, “I don’t disagree.” The judge waived any fine and said she would recommend that Ponder be allowed to serve his sentence near Washington, D.C., saying she hopes the defendant “will be able to get mental health treatment and counseling and be able to live the rest of his life without getting into trouble with law enforcement.”
