Virginia Man Who Attended Jan. 6 Sentenced to 6 Years in Prison for Attacking Police With Chemical Irritant

This image from police body-worn video, released and annotated by the Justice Department in the statement of facts supporting an arrest warrant for Markus Maly, shows Maly, circled in red, at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (Justice Department via AP)

A Virginia man was sentenced on Friday for assaulting law enforcement on Jan. 6, 2021, with a chemical irritant, amid the breach of the U.S. Capitol that day.

Markus Maly, 49, of Fincastle, Virginia, received six years in prison, as well as three years of supervised release.

His prison sentence is significantly lower than the 15 years and eight months the Department of Justice had recommended.

A jury convicted Maly on Dec. 6, 2022, of all eight charges against him. The jury trial was overseen by U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta, an Obama appointee.

Maly has been jailed since then.

He was convicted alongside two co-defendants, Peter J. Schwartz and Jeffrey Scott Brown. The three were the first people convicted of assaulting police officers with chemical irritants on Jan. 6.

Defendant Denies Attacking Police

Maly said he had simply “occupied space” in the crowd and denied attacking and spraying police with any irritants.

“I went to a rally. That’s what I did,” he told the judge.

Mehta said the jurors had ample evidence to convict Maly of assaulting police.

“It’s not that you were there and ‘occupying space.’ It’s that you did these things and kept doing them that day,” the judge told him.

The specific six felony counts Maly was convicted of were interfering with police during a civil disorder; two counts of assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers using a dangerous weapon; entering and remaining in a restricted building with a dangerous weapon; disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a dangerous weapon; and engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a dangerous weapon.

The other two charges he was convicted of include disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, and an act of physical violence in a Capitol building or grounds.

Prosecution Accuses Man of Lying

Court documents and evidence presented by prosecutors at trial said that on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, Maly pointed and sprayed a chemical—possibly pepper spray—at a line of police officers while they retreated into a tunnel in an attempt to secure an entrance at the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol Building.

Maly also took a can of spray from Schwartz and gave it to Brown, and later joined a coordinated push against police before leaving the tunnel with a stolen riot shield, prosecutor Stephen Rancourt wrote in a court filing (pdf).

Rancourt said Maly lied on the witness stand when he testified that he only showed a cannister to Boyle but didn’t spray the officer.

“Maly claimed that the stream of liquid coming out of the canister was actually a piece of fringe on his hat. However, his hat didn’t have a fringe,” Rancourt wrote.

The judge, Mehta, sentenced Schwartz in May to 14 years and two months in prison, and sentenced Brown in April to four years and six months in prison.

Schwartz’s sentence was the longest for a Jan. 6 case before Mehta gave 18 years in prison to Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia group, making it the lengthiest term among Jan. 6 cases to date.

Rhodes was convicted in 2022 of seditious conspiracy for his part in the breach of the Capitol.

In the 29 months since Jan. 6, more than 1,000 individuals have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including nearly 350 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.

Overview of Jan. 6 Deaths

On Jan. 6, 2021, proceedings at the U.S. Capitol for a joint session of Congress to count and certify electoral votes for the 2020 presidential election were temporarily interrupted when a sizable group of protesters and rioters entered the building and its surrounds. Thousands of other protesters, mostly peaceful, remained outside.

A total of five deaths were recorded in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 incident. Of the deaths, Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt was determined to have died from homicide on Jan. 6, having been shot and killed by Lt. Michael L. Byrd.

Another three people died of what was ultimately determined to be natural causes. One of them was Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick who died on Jan. 7; he was initially believed to have died due to injuries caused by protesters, but was ultimately determined to have died due to strokes. The other two people were men in their 50s who died on Jan. 6 due to hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

The fifth death involved a female protester in her 30s, Rosanne Boyland. The D.C. medical examiner ruled her death as an accident from a drug overdose. But video unsealed in December 2021 confirmed that Boyland was crushed and trampled when the crowd of protesters was pushed out of the tunnel, then repeatedly struck by police as she lay unconscious.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.