Columbia rioter during BLM protest gets 13 months in prison

COLUMBIA, SC

A 25-year-old Columbia man was sentenced Wednesday to 13 months in prison for interfering with law enforcement during a riot at city police headquarters that stemmed from a peaceful 2020 Black Lives Matter protest at the State House.

Xavier Isaiah Brown, who was 21 at the time of the riot, threw debris into a police car that had been set on fire by other rioters in the parking lot of the Columbia Police Department, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lamar Fyall said during a hearing at the police station of Columbia. Matthew Perry Courthouse. The debris acted as an “accelerator,” Fyall said.

During the hearing, Brown apologized and expressed regret, saying his participation in the May 30 protest at the State House was supposed to be peaceful, but that he was caught up in the moment as the protest moved to the Vista and the police headquarters area. . He currently has a job as a sanitary engineer.

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Last December, Brown pleaded guilty to a charge of interfering with law enforcement during a civil unrest. He had no criminal record other than a minor marijuana conviction.

Brown will also have to pay $3,000 in restitution for the police car, court officials said. He was represented by Austin Nichols and state Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland.

Federal Judge Joe Anderson handed down the sentence, noting that Americans have the right to protest peacefully — with the emphasis on “peaceful” — but violent protests cross the line, he said.

Federal sentencing guidelines recommended a sentence of twelve to eighteen months, and Anderson noted that his sentence was on the low end of the guidelines.

Anderson also noted that the right to peacefully protest was affirmed by a famous U.S. Supreme Court case, Edwards vs. South Carolina, involving the 1960 illegal mass arrests of nearly 200 African American civil rights demonstrators at the South Carolina State House.

In that case, the protesters were peaceful, but South Carolina police officers arrested them anyway. The late civil rights attorney Matthew Perry, for whom the federal courthouse in Columbia is named, represented the protesters and took that case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he ultimately won. Perry later became a federal judge.

More than a dozen police officers were injured during the May 30, 2020 riot in the Vista and at police headquarters.

The rioters were stopped from attacking Columbia Police headquarters by a phalanx of Columbia police officers, joined by Richland County sheriff’s deputies. But shops in downtown Vista were damaged, along with several police cars, some of which were set on fire.

In total, approximately 90 individuals were identified and charged with state crimes committed during those two days of Columbia riots. Columbia police reported that 24 police vehicles were damaged by broken windows, spray paint and fire. Two Columbia fire trucks were also damaged, according to a police report after the incident. The officers’ injuries included being hit by bottles, fragments of brick and pieces of wooden barricades, as well as heat stroke.

Most of the cases have been heard in state court, but some, like Brown’s, have been taken up by federal authorities.

In late May 2020, cities across America in Columbia were rocked by riots following the killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, in Minnesota by Minneapolis police. Floyd’s slow death at the hands of a white police officer while other officers stood by was captured on video by a bystander. Four police officers were sent to jail for their role in Floyd’s death.