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Thank you, Your Honor. As we noted in our defense submission, there are certain aspects of this case that make it unusual and thereby justify a more lenient sentence than that spelled out in the guidelines.
First, my client has accepted full responsibility for his actions and is genuinely remorseful. You have heard him say so in this courtroom. Well, I would argue that the words themselves should carry greater weight than his tone or body language, which are more subjective indicators. Yes, Your Honor, I did play some small role in crafting his statement, but I assure you that the sentiments are entirely his.
Secondly, I would argue, Your Honor, that a prison sentence is unnecessary. In pleading guilty to four felony counts, in losing his job, his reputation and status in the community, and his access to his children, Mr. Kleinzach has learned a painful lesson and is, therefore, exceedingly unlikely to reoffend. Would I bet the house on that? I assume you’re being facetious, Your Honor. No, I would not literally bet my house on that proposition.
Thirdly—and this goes to the question of volition—we must consider how Mr. Kleinzach found himself among the protestors inside the Capitol on January 6th. He had driven seventeen hours to Washington to show his support for his president, a man whom he idolized and whom he viewed as the victim of a historic injustice. There, at the rally on the Ellipse, his president ordered him to march to the Capitol. When your king says to you, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends,” do you, as a loyal subject, hesitate, or do you charge? I submit that Mr. Kleinzach could not have acted otherwise. To have done so would have been a betrayal.
I further maintain that my client, like many of others in the crowd, entered the Capitol intending only to exercise his right to peaceful protest under the First Amendment. As for the—shall we say?—unfortunate encounter with the police officer in the passageway leading to the House Chamber, the video evidence may appear damning at first glance. I submit, however, that what is unseen matters just as much. To begin with, as you have heard Mr. Kleinzach maintain, the fire extinguisher had already come loose from the wall and was rolling around on the floor, where someone could have tripped over it, potentially causing a stampede and mass death. Public-spirited citizen that he is, he picked up the fire extinguisher for the sole purpose of handing it over to the nearest police officer. Evidently, the officer, whom the video clearly shows reaching for his baton, made the mistaken assumption that Mr. Kleinzach’s intentions were hostile. True, in throwing the fire extinguisher, my client did not exercise sound judgment. Yes, it was doubly unfortunate that the fire extinguisher hit the officer in the head. I would note, however, that the fire extinguisher was empty, the officer was wearing a helmet, and his concussion was a mild one.
What’s that, Your Honor? No, I would not like it if you were to hit me over the head with a fire extinguisher. But, surely, the situations are not analogous. On the one hand, that would be an unprovoked attack on your part. You don’t think so? I see. Let’s put the fire extinguisher aside for the moment then. Admittedly, my client would have been better off if he had done so.
As for what you refer to as the ransacking of the speaker’s office, I would quibble a bit with that terminology. Mr. Kleinzach did scatter a few folders and papers. Yes, the cell phone video does appear to show him lifting the desk chair and striking the window with it while shouting, “We’re coming for you!” To insist, however, as the prosecutor did, that my client meant to harm the speaker is a stretch. For one thing, we know that the speaker had already been evacuated from the premises by the time Mr. Kleinzach reached her office. How then could he possibly have harmed her? Secondly, “We’re coming for you!” lends itself to any number of interpretations, not all of them violent. Mr. Kleinzach is a plain-spoken man. Were he a more artful orator, a more skilled rhetorician, he might have expressed his true sentiments with greater precision. He might have said, for example, “We would like the opportunity to talk with you about the election, Madam Speaker, and have our voices heard and given due consideration.” But a man who lacks the gift of eloquence may become frustrated in the face of an injustice and yield to a fleeting impulse to strike out. I would submit, though, that in breaking her window, he was not signifying any violent intent toward the speaker but merely blowing off steam, just as a football player might slam or punch a locker door after a tough loss.
Yes, I realize that the office of the speaker of the House of Representatives is not a locker room and that we should expect a fifty-five-year-old family man not to treat it as one. But there we get to my next point. We need to look at the totality of his life, which, outside of this one regrettable episode, he has spent in an exemplary fashion as a loving husband and father, a productive citizen, indeed, a pillar of his community. Yes, it’s true that his ex-wife turned him in. But it would not be the first time that she sought to weaponize the legal system against him. I’m referring to the restraining order that she…Ah, but this is hardly the appropriate venue in which to re-litigate that unfortunate matter, Your Honor, so I won’t take up your time with it.
Just one more point, Your Honor. As Shakespeare reminds us, mercy is “twice blest. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.’’ Undeserving Mr. Kleinzach may be, but I believe that we most ennoble ourselves when we grant mercy to the undeserving. Wouldn’t it follow then that the more undeserving the recipient is, the nobler the giver?
No, Your Honor, I do not take you for an idiot. If there is anything I may have said that has given you such an impression or otherwise caused you to take offense, I deeply regret it and humbly beg your pardon. As does my client. Yes, Your Honor, I am finished. Almost. I would only ask…Yes, Your Honor, I will sit down now.
Edward Belfar is the author of a collection of short stories called Wanderers, which was published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press in 2012. His work has also appeared in numerous literary journals, including Shenandoah, The Baltimore Review, Potpourri, Confrontation, Natural Bridge, and Tampa Review. He lives in Maryland with his wife and works as a writer and editor.