Every Defendant who has ever appeared before a judge has had to come up with something in an attempt to lessen the hammer about to fall upon them, presuming they’ve been convicted or plead guilty. Some things work better than others. Absolute, genuine, remorse works best in all but the most violent crimes. But when one tries to avoid remorse by essentially trying to make the judge look gullible and easily played? One has a far greater chance of increasing the judge’s anger and one’s sentence than helping oneself.

Buzzfeed brings us the tale of Robert Reeder and some others who’ve tried the “tourist” defense. Reeder wanted the judge to know that he was mostly a tourist in over his head as he “documented” all he saw that day.

When Robert Reeder sat down with two FBI agents in April to talk about his involvement in the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol, he described himself as an “accidental tourist with a phone trying to document everything.”

The government wasn’t buying it. Reeder “was a rioter violating the law; not a journalist; not a tourist,” the prosecutor countered this month in a brief that slammed Reeder’s apparent lack of remorse despite pleading guilty. It made the case that he should serve jail time as a “dose of reality.” When Reeder’s lawyer objected to calling his client a rioter, the prosecutor struck back, attacking Reeder’s efforts to portray himself as a “lost tourist,” a “hapless tourist,” and an “innocent and unlucky tourist.”

If a person was someone with a phone simply trying to document everything, it helps to stand way back with that phone and actually document things, taking different pictures from different angles, talking to people there, playing journalist, – you know, “documenting.” Reeder was doing more rioting than documenting.

Reeder himself has yet to be sentenced, but the Buzzfeed article mentions two other defendants who used the same argument, asking for probation – which would be entirely reasonable for people charged with the lowest level crimes. But one defendant got a month in jail, another got two. These are serious sentences because they were charged with the lowest level offenses. Additionally, as light as the sentence sounds, consider how you would react to learning that you would spend the next two months of your life in jail. We guarantee the rioters didn’t think for a minute that they’d serve any time, especially the low-level ones.

We will leave with the wise words of Judge Amy Berman-Jackson, the increasingly famous and brave Senior U.S. District Court judge in D.C.:

Shortly before announcing a sentence earlier this month for defendant Karl Dresch, US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson spoke about the seriousness of the assault on the Capitol and how participants were responsible for what happened even if they didn’t commit some of the more violent crimes that day. She read aloud an excerpt from a Facebook message Dresch had posted the day after the siege in which he wrote, “we the people took back our house, the news is all bullshit.and now those traitors Know who’s really in charge.”

“So,” Jackson said, “he’s not your typical tourist.”

Correct. And they’re getting what they deserve when trying to get around the “remorse” thing by claiming “sorta innocence.”

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