A former U.S. Marine reservist and seven others were sentenced Tuesday to decades in prison over a shooting last year that wounded a police officer during a demonstration at a Texas immigration detention center.
Prosecutors called the crime an act of terrorism and said the eight were linked to the leftist militant group antifa. The defendants' attorneys denied any antifa ties and family members expressed shock and anger over the stiff sentences.
Benjamin Song, the Marine reservist who was convicted of opening fire during the July 4 demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, the maximum punishment. The seven others sentenced in Fort Worth courtrooms received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.
“I am livid,” said Lydia Koza, whose wife, Autumn Hill, was sentenced to 50 years in prison. “The government wants to take her entire life away because she attended a protest. Nobody died.”
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges overseeing the proceedings, said what happened wasn’t a protest but “an assault on democracy.” All but one of the eight defendants sentenced Tuesday were convicted on terrorism charges.
“The need to deter this type of conduct is high,” O’Connor said.
The case drew attention beyond Texas as critics warned it could have wide-reaching impact on protests and First Amendment free-speech rights. The Justice Department called it the first sentencing of “defendants affiliated with” antifa after President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating it as a domestic terrorist organization.
Prosecutors link protesters to antifa
Trump issued the order even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations. Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.
“The sentences handed down today make clear that Antifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities will face swift and uncompromising justice,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.
Prosecutors told jurors during the trial that the group’s actions — including bringing firearms, first aid kits and wearing body armor — were signals of nefarious intent.
Attorneys for the defendants have said there was no planned ambush and that protesters who brought firearms only did so for their own protection. They argued the gathering was planned as a late-night demonstration with fireworks to show support for immigrants being held at Prairieland before gunshots broke out.
Prosecutors have said Song had yelled, “get to the rifles” and opened fire, striking a police officer who had just pulled up to the center.
Some defendants say they weren't part of the planning
Phillip Hayes, Song’s attorney, rejected characterizations that the protesters were extremists and said his client will appeal the 100-year sentence.
“This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” Hayes said. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”
Prosecutor Frank Gatto urged the judge to impose stiff penalties.
“People with that kind of extremist beliefs need extra time in prison,” Gatto said. “They believe violence is justified.”
Defendants and their family members pleaded for leniency.
Autumn Hill said the gathering “seemed more like a party to me than anything else” and that she and others who participated “didn’t expect or want any violence or destruction of property to occur.”
Hill’s attorney, Cody Cofer, told the judge that there was no evidence she had a gun, nor that she believed in violence to achieve change. He said that after fireworks were set off, she was so conscientious that she made sure to pick up the trash left behind before leaving.
Chris Tolbert, defendant Savanna Batten's attorney, has said that his client didn’t bring a firearm, spray paint or fireworks to the center, nor did she participate in the planning of the demonstration.
Hill and Batten both received 50-year sentences.
Another defendant, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, was not at Prairieland the night of the shooting or involved in the planning, his attorney Christopher Weinbel said. Sanchez Estrada, who is married to another of the defendants, was convicted only on charges of concealing documents.
Weinbel said his client just moved a box of his own belongings of artwork, poetry, journals and zines after the shooting. Nothing in the box was illegal, Weinbel said.
Sanchez Estrada was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Other defendants previously pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than take their case to trial.
Last week, federal prosecutors charged 15 people with impeding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. They claimed the demonstrators were members of antifa who conspired against the federal government to block arrests and deportations by setting up blockades around government buildings and throwing chunks of ice at federal vehicles, among other actions.
