Dominic Pezzola, a member of the Proud Boys, who stole a shield from a police officer during the January 6, 2021, insurrection, and used it to a break an outside window in the U.S. Capitol, was sentenced on September 1, 2023, to ten years in federal prison for assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers and robbery involving government property.
Other rioters then used the broken window to enter the Capitol with the intent of obstructing Congress as it authorized the election of Joe Biden as president and the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Biden.
Pezzola took a cell photo of himself inside the Capitol smoking what he called a
“victory cigar.”
Judge Timothy Kelly, in addressing Pezzola and Ethan Nordean, who was sentenced at the same time, called the events of January 6 at the U.S. Capitol “a national disgrace.”
Kelly said the lesser sentence for Pezzola reflected his lesser role in comparison to his Proud Boys co-defendants.
In his plea to Judge Kelly, Pezzola, of Rochester, N.Y., said he was “a changed man.”
He cried as he expressed regret for having to leave his wife to care for his daughters without him.
To Judge Kelly he said: “I stand before you with a heart full of regret.”
“This was the worst, most regrettable decision of my life,” he then added. “I fully realize the gravity of my actions.”
In his plea for leniency to the court, Pezzola said he had given up on politics, yet as he was escorted out of the courtroom, he repeated the baseless claim of election fraud that motivated the January, 6, insurrection, by shouting, “Trump won!”
