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UPDATE (Sept. 1, 2022, 4:26 p.m. ET): A judge on Thursday sentenced Thomas Webster, a former New York City police officer convicted of assaulting a D.C. police officer during the Jan. 6 attack, to 10 years in federal prison.
Thomas Webster, a former New York City police officer convicted of assault in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, is banking on an absurd excuse to avoid a lengthy sentence.
Webster, 56, was convicted in May of attacking a police officer. He faces a potential 17.5-year prison sentence, which would be the longest sentence handed down in a Jan. 6 case so far. So, of course, Webster and his lawyers are pulling out all the stops to convince the judge to hand down a lesser sentence — including the cop-iest excuse imaginable.
Their desperation was spelled out in a court filing last week that included a letter from a psychiatrist who linked Webster’s violent encounter with police Jan. 6 to post-traumatic stress stemming from his childhood and work at the New York City Police Department.
According to NBC News:
His lawyers are seeking a downward departure from the sentencing guidelines in his case. In a letter they filed seeking a lower sentence, Webster told a psychologist that he could make a connection between his violent actions at the Capitol to a past fight with an armed robber in the Bronx who was trying to get his gun. Webster told the psychologist he attacked a Capitol Police officer with a metal flagpole because “at that moment, I had flashbacks of the struggle we had on the staircase.”
It’s a variation of the failed argument Webster’s lawyer offered up during his trial, which claimed he had just been trying to help the officer he attacked “see my hands,” purportedly because Webster wanted the officer to know he wasn’t a threat.
In reality, video from Jan. 6 shows Webster swinging a metal pole at the officer and pulling at his mask.
I’ll admit: This is a first for me. I’m accustomed to police officers and wannabe police officers using the “he went for my gun" defense — often as justification for killing Black people. Normally, when they use the defense, it’s to excuse violence they committed at that very moment. Webster’s filing is the first time I’m seeing the defense used to downplay violence committed at least a decade after the fact … on a completely uninvolved person … who happens to be a police officer.
The psychiatrist’s letter reads like the rough draft of a made-for-TV-movie script. It suggests Webster overcame a traumatic childhood to become a venerable police officer, only for the job to somehow lead him to participate in a violent attack on democracy a decade after he retired.
It’s quite a reach. I can’t blame Webster’s lawyer for trying, I suppose. He’s not wrong to assume playing up Webster’s days on the force might garner leniency. Regardless, it’s a cynical — and unworthy — argument for this case.