WASHINGTON — A Texas electrician will spend the next year of weekends in jail for using a police riot shield to ram officers who were defending the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Adam Lejay Jackson, 43, of Katy, Texas, was arrested in June 2022 alongside his brother, Brian Jackson, on multiple felony counts alleging they joined in the assault on a line of police attempting to prevent rioters from entering the Capitol through the Lower West Terrace Tunnel. Jackson pleaded guilty in September to one felony count of assaulting a federal officer. His brother pleaded guilty in February to the same count and is set to be sentenced in August.
Federal prosecutors sought 41 months in prison for Jackson, saying his assault on police had an “invigorating effect” on nearby rioters. At his sentencing hearing Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Perri said he had a hard time reconciling Jackon’s presentation of himself as a family man and small business owner with the rioter seen in photos standing on a ladder on Jan. 6 and urging on the violent mob.
“Who then was… the person who couldn’t wait to be part of the violence at the mouth of the Lower West Terrace Tunnel?” Perri asked.
Jackson’s attorney, Joseph McBride, described him as a “contrite and sorrowful man” who had been humbled by the loss of his business and the sacrifices his family had made following his arrest – particularly his son Adam Jr.’s decision to leave college, and a football scholarship, to try to keep a new family business afloat.
“Adam did that to him. And he knows it. And he’s not ever going to be able to change it,” McBride said. “That’s punishment.”
McBride sought a sentence that would allow Jackson to continue operating his new business, Patriot Services Electrical, which employs multiple members of his family. U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ultimately did fashion such a sentence – although he repeatedly stressed that it was not the court that put Jackson’s family in their position.
“Obviously his very poor decisions put them in a very precarious place,” Contreras said. “That’s on him. That’s not on me.”
Jackson himself spoke briefly Thursday, saying his judgment had been “clouded” by alcohol and that he deeply regretted assaulting police.
“I went there that day to watch Mr. Trump speak,” Jackson said. “I didn’t got there with evil intent.”
Earlier in the day, Contreras, who was nominated to the federal bench in 2012 by former President Barack Obama, sentenced another rioter, Colorado geophysicist Jeffrey Sabol, to more than five years in prison for assaulting a downed DC Police officer on Jan. 6. He noted that defendants like Jackson, who faced a guideline range of 37-46 months in prison, have routinely received three or more years behind bars. But, he said, there were “unique aspects” to Jackson’s case – primarily the “significant collateral damage” his family would sustain if he were to be incarcerated for a lengthy period.
Contreras then handed down one of the most unique sentences to date in a Jan. 6 case. Jackson was ordered to serve three years of probation – the first year of which will be spent on home confinement with GPS monitoring and intermittent confinement every weekend for 52 consecutive weeks. Jackson was also ordered to pay $2,000 in restitution and a fine of $4,392.
“I’m trying to not make your family suffer as much for what you’ve done,” Contreras said.
Contreras also warned Jackson his conditional freedom was balanced on a fine thread.
“If there’s a violation it’s going to come back to me, Mr. Jackson,” he said. “And I’m going to be watching closely.”
Nearly 500 defendants have now been arrested and charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding police during the Capitol riot, including more than 120 charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon during the assault. In total, more than 1,300 defendants have been charged in the 38 months since Jan. 6. More than 850 have now been sentenced.