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WASHINGTON (AP) — A former Virginia police officer who stormed the U.S. Capitol received a reduced prison sentence of six years on Wednesday, making him one of the first beneficiaries of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that limited the government's use of a federal obstruction law.
More than two years ago, former Rocky Mount Police Sgt. Thomas Robertson originally was sentenced to seven years and three months of imprisonment for joining a mob's Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Prosecutors urged U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper to preserve the original sentence, but the judge imposed the shorter prison term Wednesday after agreeing to dismiss Robertson's conviction for obstructing the congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.
Robertson was the first Capitol riot defendant to be resentenced after the dismissal of a conviction for the obstruction charge at the center of the Supreme Court's ruling in June, according to Justice Department prosecutors. The high court ruled 6-3 that a charge of obstructing an official proceeding must include proof that a defendant tried to tamper with or destroy documents — a distinction that applies to few Jan. 6 criminal cases.
“I assume I won't be seeing you a third time,” the judge told Robertson at the end of his second sentencing hearing.
Robertson, who declined to address the court at his first sentencing hearing, told the judge on Wednesday that he looks forward to returning home and rebuilding his life after prison.
“I realize the positions that I was taking on that day were wrong,” he said of Jan. 6. “I'm standing before you very sorry for what occurred on that day.”
A jury convicted Robertson of all six counts in his indictment, including charges that he interfered with police officers during a civil disorder and that he entered a restricted area with a dangerous weapon, a large wooden stick. Robertson’s jury trial was the second among hundreds of Capitol riot cases.
Robertson traveled to Washington on that morning with another off-duty Rocky Mount police officer, Jacob Fracker, and a third man, a neighbor who wasn’t charged in the case.
Fracker, who pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and agreed to cooperate with the government, was sentenced in 2022 to probation and two months of home detention.
Jurors who convicted Robertson saw some of his posts on social media before and after the riot. In a Facebook post on Nov. 7, 2020, Robertson said “being disenfranchised by fraud is my hard line.”
“I’ve spent most of my adult life fighting a counter insurgency. (I’m) about to become part of one, and a very effective one,” he wrote.
After Jan. 6, Robertson told a friend that he was prepared to fight and die in a civil war and he clung to baseless conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen from then-President Donald Trump.
“He's calling for an open, armed rebellion. He's prepared to start one,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Aloi told the judge.
Prosecutors said Robertson used his law enforcement and military training to block police officers who were trying to hold off the advancing mob.
Defense attorney Mark Rollins said Robertson made bad choices and engaged in bad behavior on Jan. 6 but wasn't trying to “overthrow democracy” that day.
“What you find now is a broken man,” Rollins said.
The town fired Robertson and Fracker after the riot. Rocky Mount is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Roanoke, Virginia, and has about 5,000 residents.