Chief Judge Beryl Howell, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM
Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell chided federal prosecutors on Thursday for taking a “muddled approach” to some Jan. 6 cases, as she sentenced a man who stormed the Capitol for a petty misdemeanor offense.
A lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice wrote in a sentencing memo that Jack Griffith, a Tennessee man who entered the Capitol with three co-defendants, participated in an attack that caused “absolute chaos,” posed a “grave threat to our democratic norms” and “defies comparison” to other events in the country’s history.
