Robert Reeder, a defendant from the Capitol riot, was supposed to be sentenced Wednesday in a much anticipated case. But the hearing was canceled as video surfaced just hours prior to the hearing. The video appears to show Reeder assaulting police on Jan. 6.

Why was this sentencing hearing so important?

Reeder had pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count for parading, demonstrating, and picketing in the Capitol — a nonviolent offense and one of the lowest-level charges filed in association with January 6th. We have no idea why the government filed such a low-level charge because it then asked the court to sentence Reeder to two months in jail for the sole reason that Reeder had failed to show any remorse about the incident. Perhaps prosecutors did not then have admissible evidence to prove anything worse.

Because so many rioters are not the least bit remorseful, people had been closely watching for this hearing to see how judges might handle defendants who stand in court and say that they do not regret their crime.

But prosecutors moved to delay the hearing due to the work of the “Sedition Hunters,” a group we reported on earlier this week. The Sedition Hunters are citizen investigators who work with law enforcement to identify rioters. The Hunters initially tweeted an image of a man with his arm outstretched making contact with an officer; the man was wearing a red hat and blue jacket that matched what Reeder was photographed wearing on Jan. 6 in other evidence previously filed in his case.

According to Buzzfeed:

In the video, two police officers advance in the direction of the man identified as Reeder on the steps in front of one of the entrances to the Capitol. The man is then seen striking at one of the officers before being pushed back as other members of the crowd join the fight.

We are extremely good at what we do, our small group has spent thousands of hours on research. Yet only 4 hours before a court hearing for a plea deal for Robert Reeder do we find the assault. This truly is a massive undertaking! Did we make it in time? #WeHope pic.twitter.com/lzV7P9tw7H

— SeditionHunters (@SeditionHunters) August 18, 2021

Initially, prosecutors were simply going to increase the penalty recommended to six months before deciding to request a continuance (clearly, the better decision):

Rothstein said the government initially planned to just revise its sentencing recommendation for Reeder from two months to six months in jail — the maximum penalty allowed for the misdemeanor count he pleaded guilty to — to reflect the more serious conduct depicted in the video. But once prosecutors learned there were more videos, Rothstein said they decided to ask for a delay to make sure they had all of the relevant evidence and enough time to go through it before figuring out how to proceed.

Congratulations to the Sedition Hunters. January 6th involved so much chaos among so many people that this type of thing is likely to be an increasingly common scenario, where prosecutors learn about more serious crimes as the cases progress through the system, this is especially true when the government’s resources are tripled (or more) by citizens’ groups assisting in identifying people involved in the most serious crimes committed that day.

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