Greer, SC man sentenced to home detention for Jan. 6 Capitol riot involvement

A Greer man who breached the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot was sentenced Thursday to three months’ home detention, three years’ probation and ordered to pay $500 in restitution to go toward repairing the vandalism by the mob.

James Lollis, 47, received a relatively light sentence because he came forward, admitted his guilt and expressed remorse. U.S. Judge Beryl Howell also said Lollis was not violent toward officers on Jan. 6, and said he did not commit vandalism during the five minutes that he was inside the Capitol.

Moreover, Lollis had already been somewhat punished because his real estate firm fired him for participating in the riot after he was arrested last September by the FBI and charged with various riot related offenses, the judge said during a 70-minute sentencing hearing in Washington District Court.

Lollis, who pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor offense of picketing or demonstrating inside a Capitol building, was the third of 11 people from South Carolina arrested for their participation in the riot. Other charges against him were dropped because of his guilty plea.

Despite the light sentence, Howell made it clear that Lollis’ offense was serious because he had “joined the mob intentionally” after seeing rioters break into the Capitol.

Howell also said she was concerned about a message Lollis texted to an unidentified person six days after the riot that referred to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a prominent Democrat, saying, “Hang the (Expletive).”

Pelosi’s office was vandalized by the mob, and an officer shot and killed a rioter who was climbing through a door outside the House chambers.

Greer man apologizes for involvement

On Jan. 6, the judge said that Lollis passed a police officer and asked him, “if he was on the same team as the rioters.”

Lollis “expressed frustration” that the officer did not respond, the judge said.

Inside the Capitol, Lollis pasted a sticker that said “(Obscenity) Antifa” on a door frame — a disrespectful act on a beautiful building, a beautiful building, that all Americans should be proud of, that we should preserve and protect, ” the judge said.

The actions of Lollis and other people in the mob had national security implications, because the riot caused “our democracy to lose so much standing around the world,” the judge said.

Lollis, who was in court and at times appeared to fight back tears, apologized to his parents, family, police at the Capitol and government officials working in the Capitol that day.

“I understand the fear that this caused so many, ... putting our nation’s security in jeopardy,” said Lollis, who said he now realized the instability that the rioters had brought to the country. “I wish I had never made the trip to D.C. I have been cast by many on the right as a traitor for my plea of guilt and accepting the consequences of my mistakes.”

Lollis said he still suffers from PTSD because of what he witnessed on Jan. 6, and from the knowledge that people died in the Capitol riot.

Since that day, he has seen videos of rioters overwhelming Capitol police. “I can’t imagine the terror that they felt. I am embarrassed to be associated with these people,” he said .

“I now see there are better ways of expressing my opinions concerning topics relating to the government ... and not spending the passing hours of my children’s lives on social media,” said Lollis, who described himself as a single father who is really close to his children.

‘There are consequences’ for Capitol riot, judge says

Lollis’s lawyer, federal public defender Michelle Peterson, had asked for probation in a pre-sentence filing.

Lollis was only in the Capitol for a few minutes and committed no violence, Peterson stressed.

He’s “expressed genuine remorse and contrition, has cooperated fully with law enforcement, he immediately indicated a desire to plead guilty and did so as soon as the government made the plea offer. His acceptance of responsibility was complete and without reservation,” she wrote.

Peterson also filed more than a dozen letters of support for Lollis by friends and family, including one by Shannon Green, a neighbor who said, “Mr. Lollis is a good man, a good friend and a wonderful father to his children.”

Probation was opposed by assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Amore, who sought three months’ home detention, 36 months’ of probation, 100 hours of community service and $500 in restitution.

Although Lollis was not overtly violent, he was a participant in “a violent attack that forced an interruption of the certification of the 2020 Electoral College vote count, threatened the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 Presidential election, injured more than one hundred law enforcement officers, and resulted in more than one million dollars’ of property damage,” Amore wrote.

Amore continued, “Even if Lollis himself did not participate in any violence or destruction of property, he was certainly aware of the mob’s riotous behavior and, despite witnessing these acts, followed the rioters into the Capitol Building.”

Lollis was one of thousands of people who traveled to Washington on Jan. 6, drawn by false claims by then-President Donald Trump and others that Democrats had stolen the election. At a pre-riot rally, Trump and others urged his supporters to go to the Capitol and “stop the steal.”

Congress was in a special joint session that day to count and certify electoral votes from each state, which ultimately would confirm Joe Biden as president. Congress had no power to overturn the votes, and then-Vice President Mike Pence, who was in charge of counting the votes, rejected public pleas by Trump to not count some pro-Biden electoral votes.

Jan. 6 was the first interruption of the peaceful transfer of power in a presidential election in the nation’s history.

Although Lollis’ attorney stressed he had not planned to break any laws that day, Peterson said Lollis was caught up in the “energy” of the day and followed rioters into the Capitol.

“There are consequences for going along with the crowd when the crowd is engaging in clear and obvious criminal activity like obstructing the peaceful transfer of power after an election,” the judge said.

This story was originally published February 17, 2022 at 3:13 PM.