WASHINGTON — A Utah farmer and former MMA fighter says he filled the void left by the death of his abusive father with devotion to former President Donald Trump – ultimately leading him to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and, on Tuesday, to sentencing on multiple felony charges.
Odin Meacham, 30, of Myton, Utah, was arrested in May 2023 and indicted in August of that year on eight counts for his role in the Capitol riot. He was convicted by a judge in June of this year all counts, including two counts of assaulting police with a dangerous weapon and a third count of assault without a weapon.
Federal prosecutors are seeking 96 months, or eight years, in prison for Meacham. In a sentencing memo filed last week, they described him as am “agent of chaos” who repeatedly assaulted police officers after he was pepper sprayed while first attempting to wrest away a bike rack barricade.
“After being pepper sprayed, Meacham picked up a wooden flagpole and struck a police officer on his upper body so hard that the flagpole broke in half,” prosecutors wrote. “Meacham was then pepper sprayed again. Undeterred, Meacham picked up the broken half of the flagpole and then rushed the police line again, striking the bike rack barricade precisely where an officer’s hand had been just second earlier. After two flagpole strikes, Meacham picked up a black metal pole from the ground and threw it at MPD Sergeant Kimball, directly striking him.”
Meacham later attempted to wrestle a baton away from an officer, and repeatedly hurled invectives at police, including shouting at them, “Are you scared motherf***er?”
An eight-year sentence would be among the longest handed down to a Jan. 6 defendant not convicted of conspiracy. Peter Schwartz, of Pennsylvania, was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2023 on four separate counts of assaulting police with a dangerous weapon along with other weapon-related felonies. Julian Khater, also of Pennsylvania, was sentenced to more than 6.5 years in prison after pleading guilty to pepper spraying two officers, including U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick.
In their memo, prosecutors said U.S. District Judge John Bates should consider what kind of sentence Khater would have received without the credit he received for accepting responsibility. They said Meacham, who rejected a plea deal and went to trial, should receive none.
But Meacham’s attorneys want Bates to see him in a different light. In their 22-page defense memo, assistant federal public defenders Emily Stirba and Adam Bridge, described a man who spent most of his life living under impoverished and often abusive conditions as the youngest of 11 children of a farmer in rural Utah. Stirba and Bridge said Meacham’s father, who they described as a “terrible tornado of a person,” died just weeks before the 2020 election – leaving Meacham with a void he was quick to fill with devotion to Trump.
“It is not surprising that Mr. Meacham would seek to fill the hole left by his controlling, narcissistic, charismatic father with someone who shared similar traits,” Stirba and Bridge wrote.
Meacham’s attorneys said he felt he had failed the people in his life and that coming to D.C., at the behest of Trump and his surrogates, was a way for him to fight for them. He said as much to law enforcement when they finally showed up at his door two years after the riot with a warrant for his arrest, telling them his “particular purpose, as sad as it sounds, was Trump told us to show up.
“We thought it was going to make some type of difference for what we believed he was telling us,” Meacham told investigators.
Meacham’s attorneys said he must also live with the guilt of bringing his 19-year-old nephew, Nejourde Meacham, along with him to D.C. Nejourde was charged himself with the standard four misdemeanor counts in July 2023 for allegedly unlawfully entering the Capitol on Jan. 6. He died by suicide a month later at the age of 22.
Meacham’s attorneys asked Bates to sentence him to 40 months, or roughly 3.3 years, in prison. That would be approximately half of the midpoint of the 70-87 months they estimated he would face as a guideline sentence were Bates to grant him the two levels of responsibility credit they also argue he deserves.
Meacham was scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday afternoon in D.C. District Court.
In the 45 months since the attack on the U.S. Capitol, more than 1,500 defendants have been charged. Nearly 1,200 defendants have now pleaded guilty or been convicted, including more than 200 who have pleaded guilty to assaulting, resisting or impeding police.