Good deed on Jan. 6 likely spared SC couple jail time for being in Capitol riot

A good deed likely spared a South Carolina couple charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot from serving a stint in jail, one of their lawyers said late Monday.

Instead of getting the 15 days in jail sought by the prosecutor, William Gallman, 39, and his wife, Joei Gallman, 43, of Fountain Inn, wound up getting 18 months probation, a $1,000 fine, and 50 hours of community service. Each Gallman must also pay a $500 general restitution fee for the nearly $3 million in damages that the mob did to the Capitol building,

“I pointed out to the judge that the video showed he even picked up some velvet rope and poles that others had knocked over and put them back upright,” said Ryan Beasley, attorney for William Gallman, in an interview.

Beasley and Cindy Crick, attorney for Joei Gallman, also stressed to Judge Amy Berman Jackson that the Gallmans had not been violent during their 35 minutes inside the Capitol while it was under assault by a mob seeking to stop Congress from ratifying President Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 election.

Evidence against the Gallmans included multiple videos and photos of them inside the Capitol taken by themselves and others, including police on duty that day wearing body cameras.

LIke most people involved in the Capitol breach, the Gallmans were supporters of former President Donald Trump, who had staged a rally before the riot and falsely told thousands that he had won the 2020 presidential election. Trump now faces state and federal criminal charges related to allegedly trying to overthrow the presidential election and prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

Numerous federal and state investigations, as well as some 60 court cases, have produced no evidence that Trump won the 2020 election.

“He (William Gallman) is extremely remorseful for his involvement in the instant offense,” Beasley wrote in a sentencing memo. “He certainly would do things differently if he had the opportunity. John simply wants to put this criminal matter behind him and move forward.”

Beasley also told the judge that Gallman had a difficult life, struggling with drug and alcohol addiction, but now, “along with his wife, owns a small but growing fabrication business. He has many years’ experience in welding and computer aided design... (and) is essentially self-taught. The Defendant works hard. His small business is an asset to his family and community. He employs three full-time workers and contracts additional workers as needed. He is a tax-paying business owner with a bright future.”

Crick wrote that Joei Gallman “attended a rally in Washington, D.C. which was organized to challenge the presidential election. Although she did not follow politics closely at the time, Ms. Gallman went to the rally with her husband and believed she would be participating in a historical protest event. After listening to speeches at the Ellipse, Ms. Gallman and her husband followed the massive crowd to the Capitol and eventually entered the Capitol.”

At the time, Joei Gallman “viewed the event as something that might be historically similar to Woodstock (a huge outdoor rock concert in 1969 during the Vietnam War). Ms. Gallman was present on the Capitol grounds in her everyday attire and had no intention of entering the Capitol until others began doing so,” Crick wrote.

“Ms. Gallman was initially amazed and enthralled with the Capitol building interior because she had never visited. She took pictures while her husband picked up velvet rope barricades knocked over by others in the building,” Crick wrote.

At some point, the Gallmans began seeing people “dressed in riot gear and other odd attire. Ms. Gallman remembers thinking those were not normal people and that she was now caught up in the wrong thing. It was at this point they realized the gravity of the situation and began looking for an exit,” Crick wrote.

Michael Gordon, assistant U.S. Attorney and prosecutor on the case, noted the seriousness of the Capitol attack in his sentencing memo.

The breach was a “violent attack that forced an interruption of Congress’s certification of the 2020 Electoral College vote count, threatened the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 Presidential election, injured more than one hundred police officers, and resulted in more than $2.9 million in losses.,” he wrote.

The Gallmans should have known they weren’t supposed to be in the Capitol, Gordon wrote, because they entered the building on the Senate side “while alarms blared and other rioters were entering the building,” saw broken windows, posed for photographs and took photographs of other rioters and observed violent clashes between rioters and police.

They stayed in the Capitol 35 minutes and only left because they and other people who broke into the Capitol were pushed from the hallway by a phalanx of police executing a crowd-control maneuver, Gordon wrote.

Gordon also wrote that the Gallmans entered the Capitol building just seven minutes after a door was breached, “making them part of the initial wave of rioters that quickly overwhelmed police officers and provided the rioters with nearly unfettered access to the Capitol’s chambers, offices, hallways, and other sensitive areas....

“While the Gallmans did not wear tactical gear or engage in violence, the true strength of the rioters was in the mob’s sheer numbers, and they added to that power,” Gordon wrote.

The charge against the Gallmans — parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building — was a misdemeanor offense that carries a maximum of six months in prison and a fine of not more than $5,000.

More than 1,106 defendants have been charged in nearly every state and the District of Columbia in connection with the breach, according to the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney’s office. Approximately 632 have pleaded guilty so far.

Seventeen of 23 people from South Carolina charged in the Jan. 6 riot have been convicted. Of those who have been convicted, all but three have gotten prison time ranging from two weeks to several years.

This story was originally published August 22, 2023 at 10:40 AM.