At sentencing Friday in Washington, DC, 25-year-old Patrick McCaughey of Ridgefield could receive the longest sentence yet for a Jan. 6 perpetrator, surpassing the 10-year term being served by former NYPD officer Thomas Webster.
In one of the most widely distributed images of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump, D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges is seen being crushed by McCaughey with a riot shield. Hodges survived.
In a sentencing memorandum, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kimberly Paschall writes that McCaughey should receive 15 years and 8 months in prison, saying that term “reflects the gravity of McCaughey’s conduct.”
“McCaughey joined the mob of rioters on the West Front,” writes Paschall, “engaged with police, and bragged about his conduct on January 6 to his friends back in Connecticut.”
In a corresponding memorandum, defense attorney Dennis Boyle argues for just one year in prison for McCaughey, whom he calls “a good man who has learned from his mistake.”
As with hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants, McCaughey’s afternoon in the closed Capitol building was caught on surveillance video and photos from his own cellphone.
Prosecutors say that during rioters’ struggle with police in the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace tunnel, McCaughey got hold of a police riot shield and crushed Hodges with it, trapping Hodges against a door frame. Hodges’ screams for help are audible on video of the incident.
After Hodges got help to free himself, prosecutors say McCaughey struck Officer Henry Foulds with the same shield, before McCaughey retreated after being struck with a chemical irritant deployed by police.
Prosecutors also say McCaughey lied under oath about his role: “His lies were neither minimal nor insignificant – they were directly tied to his knowledge, intent, and purpose,” writes Paschall. “This outward disrespect of the Court, not only as a judicial officer, but as a trier of fact, should weigh heavily on the sentence.”
In his memorandum on McCaughey’s behalf, attorney Boyle writes that his client’s Jan. 6 conduct is “the only legal transgression this hard-working person has ever committed” and that McCaughey knows he was wrong.
Boyle adds that, “Mr. McCaughey’s father was a fervent Trump supporter and asked his son to come to the Trump rally with him. Mr. McCaughey agreed because he enjoyed spending time with his father and wanted to bond with him.”
McCaughey’s mother and sister also comment in his defense. Patrick’s sister, Maria, writes, “I believe my father’s dedication to ignoring all issues that did not interest him, and his tendency to cut out those who disagreed with him forced my brother to adapt to his interests once again and therefore, radicalize himself too. I firmly believe that my brother would not have gone so far to the extreme without his need to cultivate a positive relationship with my father, and that he would not have been anywhere near the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, without my father’s fervor about a “stolen election.”
In a federal bench trial last year before Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, McCaughey was convicted on 9 counts, including 7 felonies: 3 counts of aiding or abetting or assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers; one count of obstruction of an official proceeding; one count of interfering with a law enforcement officer during a civil disorder, one count of disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, and one count of engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon.
McCaughey remains in federal custody prior to sentencing.
Prosecutors had recommended 17.5 years for Webster, before he was handed a ten-year sentence, the longest term for a Jan. 6 convict to this point.