First rioter to enter Capitol on Jan. 6 sentenced to more than four years

The first rioter to enter the Capitol building during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack was sentenced Tuesday to more than four years in prison for his role in the riot.  

Michael Sparks, 47, of Kentucky, was convicted by a federal jury on six counts in March, including interfering with police and obstructing Congress from certifying the 2020 election results. He was sentenced to 53 months in prison.

Prosecutors later asked to dismiss the count charging Sparks with obstruction of an official proceeding, after the Supreme Court in June narrowed use of the charge in Jan. 6 cases, which U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted. But on Tuesday, he said that, for purposes of sentencing, he found obstructing the certification was Sparks’s intent.  

The judge ordered the 53 months of incarceration, plus $2,000 in restitution to the Architect of the Capitol, which maintains the Capitol's grounds.

Footage showed Sparks jumping through a shattered window shortly after another rioter busted it open and then chasing a police officer up a flight of stairs.  

Kelly said Sparks’s status as the first rioter in the building had an “emboldening, encouraging effect” on others. He noted video footage showing at least one rioter hesitating to enter until after Sparks did.  

“You went through, and he went through, and many, many more went through,” Kelly said.  

Prosecutors sought 57 months in prison for Sparks, whom they said “helped light the fire” that day, suggesting he prepared with protective body armor to brace against officers attempting to push back the mob. Sparks “immediately" set off the forced interruption of Congress’s certification of the presidential election after leaping through a window Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola smashed open with a stolen riot shield, they said. 

Sparks was one of several rioters U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman later steered away from the Senate chamber, where lawmakers were still sheltering in place, as they chased him. Goodman testified during Sparks’s trial that the rioter was among the most concerning in the group due to his volume and “in-your-face attitude.” 

Sparks left the Capitol soon after then-Vice President Pence was evacuated through a hallway just yards away from where the rioter stood off with police, prosecutors said.  

“For his efforts to impede law enforcement, overturn the election results, and destroy evidence of his crimes, and for his lack of any recognition of the gravity of his role in the offense, Sparks must be sentenced to a significant term of incarceration,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Allen wrote in the government’s sentencing memorandum. 

Scott Wendelsdorf, Sparks’s attorney, asked the judge to sentence Sparks to a year of home incarceration. He said in court filings earlier this month that the rioter should “not escape punishment” but that penalty should be “just.” 

Wendelsdorf blamed a “disingenuous but effective campaign” by former President Trump and his allies to convince Sparks and other supporters that the 2020 presidential election was stolen for the conduct at the Capitol. He noted in filings that Sparks is still a "follower” of the former president.  

“Mr. Sparks believed his president and traveled to Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, to protest what he had been told was a stolen election — not by engaging in physical violence against police or members of Congress, but by supporting, encouraging, and enabling what he had been told and in good faith believed was Vice President Pence’s constitutional duty to reverse the election results and declare Trump president,” Wendelsdorf wrote in Sparks’s sentencing memorandum.  

Wendelsdorf said that Sparks “literally quit the protest” and walked away as soon as it became apparent that Pence would not declare Trump the election’s winner.  

Sparks was arrested on Jan. 19, 2021, and first indicted on Feb. 5, 2021, followed by a superseding indictment in November of the same year. 

In all, more than 1,400 rioters across the country have been charged for their actions on Jan. 6.