Among President-elect Donald Trump’s supporters banking on him honoring pledges from his campaign, some Jacksonville-area people are part of a crowd whose futures he could really change.
Trump “’has repeatedly pledged to pardon U.S. Capitol rioters on Day One’,” an attorney for Fleming Island home remodeler Marcus Smith reminded a federal judge in Washington Friday, quoting news coverage as the lawyer asked to delay Smith’s sentencing for destroying government property during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by Trump supporters.
U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich rejected the request and kept Smith, 48, scheduled for sentencing three days before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration for his second term in office.
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Smith could be sentenced to up to 10 years behind bars for his part in damaging an 1850s mahogany door in the Capitol’s Senate wing, estimated to cost about $21,000 to replace.
Some judges have recently delayed cases involving other Jan. 6 defendants such as Jake Lang, a New Yorker who tweeted a New Year’s Day message that “2025 will be forever … known as the year GOD SET FREE the J6ers.”
Whether Jan. 6 rioters will be pardoned wholesale is one of countless unknowns about the second Trump presidency, and Smith attorney Kevin A. Tate’s delay request acknowledged that “certainly there is no guarantee Mr. Smith will be pardoned.”
A violent mob charges and attacks U.S. Capitol police officers during the pro-Trump riots in Washington, D.C.
If pardons come, these Northeast Florida Northeast Florida residents might get out of prison early:
∎ Anthony L. Sargent, 48, of St. Augustine, was sentenced to five years behind bars in December 2023 for a felony conviction of civil disorder and a series of misdemeanor charges.
The U.S. Justice Department said Sargent grabbed and pushed a police officer who tried to detain a rioter; shoved two officers away from the Capitol while they tried to retreat; and twice threw “a heavy object” at Capitol doors police were standing behind, urging others to do the same.
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The agency said that before the riot, Sargent stated his support for a riot and for civil war on a messaging platform of the right-wing Proud Boys extremist group.
Sargent is at Federal Correctional Institution Jesup in South Georgia, scheduled for release in February 2028, according to a federal Bureau of Prisons website.
∎ Daniel Paul Gray, 44, of Jacksonville, is also at Jesup, serving a 30-month sentence for struggling with a female police officer during the riot. Gray, who is scheduled for release in February 2026, told a judge before his sentencing he had “no one to blame but myself for my actions.”
Blanket pardons could also relieve strain on these people awaiting trial for riot-related charges:
∎ Garth Walton, 33, was arrested in Nassau County in July and is awaiting trial on charges including assaulting, resisting or impeding officers and obstructing law enforcement during a civil disorder as well as several misdemeanors.
∎ Palatka resident Dylan Swinehart, 24, was charged in August with four misdemeanors involving entering a restricted building and disorderly or disruptive conduct. He has pleaded not guilty and his charges are still hanging over him.
People who’ve already served time behind bars might also feel some benefit (maybe limited) if a pardon removed some restrictions that still control how they live their lives.
For example, Macclenny resident Bradley Weeks served a 10-month sentence for charges including the felony of obstructing an official proceeding before the U.S. Supreme Court decided that charge shouldn’t have been applied to some riot defendants. He was resentenced to the time he had already served, but until February is still under home detention with and location monitoring as part of a “supervised release” that followed his time locked up. That meant that when Weeks, a photographer, was hired for a photo shoot in North Georgia, his lawyers had to ask a judge last month to approve a special order allowing him to travel farther than his release normally allows.
At least 11 people from Jacksonville and nearby counties were charged in connection to the riot, but some have already completed sentences and might not be affected by pardons.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Will Trump’s pledge to pardon J6 rioters help Jacksonville-area people?