A BLM protester in North Carolina got a harsher sentence than anyone from Jan. 6. Why?
In December, a 28-year-old was sentenced to about seven years in prison by a federal district court for setting fire to a Dollar General Express store during one of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests in downtown Raleigh. The man, Richard Rubalcava, was also ordered to pay more than $350,000 to the Fortune 500 corporation.
The sentencing was weeks shy of Jan. 6, the anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters. Of the 71 people who have been sentenced for crimes related to the January 6 insurrection, 31 face prison time. Sentences range from six months to about five years.
Rubalcava was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, borderline intellectual functioning, multiple substance abuse disorders, and more mental illnesses by a forensic psychologist at Butner’s federal correctional complex. The “QAnon Shaman,” Jacob Chansley, also received multiple diagnoses from the Bureau of Prisons, including transient schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Chansley was sentenced to 41 months, less than half of Rubalcava’s sentencing.
We’ll likely see longer sentences as the January 6 cases move through federal courts — several people are pleading guilty to charges with eight-year minimum sentences. We’ll also continue seeing Black Lives Matter protesters tried and sentenced across the country. It feels apt to juxtapose the two.
It’s important to remember the purposes of each protest: one was a nationwide outcry after video showed the murder of a Black man by Minneapolis police. The other was an attack on the U.S. Capitol based on conspiracy theories.
In Raleigh, more than 160 people were arrested during Black Lives Matter protests. Wake District Attorney Lorrin Freeman told WRAL that most of these charges are for misdemeanors like failing to disperse, and have been or will be dropped. Kerwin Pittman, a criminal justice activist and the founder of Recidivism Reduction Educational Program Services, says cases from the protests in Elizabeth City after Andrew Brown Jr.’s killing have been dismissed, but not necessarily for the right reasons.
“They’re being dismissed on the premise that the officers who charged these individuals were not ready for this type of mass demonstration and to even be equipped and educated enough to charge individuals with different charges,” Pittman explained.
In Washington, the physical symbol of American democracy was invaded. Five people died. Despite the treasonous implications of an attempt to overturn the results of a legitimate election, the Justice Department hasn’t charged anyone with treason thus far.
Arson is objectively not good. Theft from private companies is objectively not good. But we have to differentiate between the damage caused to a Dollar General and the damage caused to a nation.
Black Lives Matter protests seemed to have an impact on conservative legislators. Reuters reports that 37 states have introduced anti-protest bills in the wake of the 2020 protests; 11 of those bills have passed. In North Carolina, an “anti-riot bill” passed the General Assembly before being vetoed by Cooper. The protests and get-out-the-vote initiatives that followed also partly fueled the insurrection itself.
A prison sentence probably isn’t the best solution for the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. A 2016 report from the Anti-Defamation League found that prison gangs were the fastest-growing sect of the white supremacy movement in the United States — North Carolina had four at the time.
Prison also isn’t a solution for mental illness, no matter who carries out the crimes. The National Alliance on Mental Illness says that while around 40 percent of all incarcerated people have a history of mental illness, less than two-thirds of those people get the appropriate mental health care while incarcerated.
Independent of these caveats, our prison system isn’t disappearing anytime soon. As a nation, we should expect equal justice under the law, and that everyone will face proportionate consequences in our “tough on crime” mindset. In reality, the prosecutions of insurrectionists, in comparison to the prosecution of BLM protesters, may show what the protesters wanted everyone to see — that the law doesn’t land equally for everyone.
