Benjamin Song was sentenced to 100 years in prison on Tuesday after a Texas protest case that ended with a police officer shot in the shoulder. The sentence landed after a three-week jury trial and a March verdict that also produced decades-long terms for several other defendants.
Song was convicted of attempted murder of an officer of the United States, firearm charges, explosives charges, riot, and providing material support to terrorists. He fired an AR-15 from the woods, hit one police officer in the shoulder, and the officer survived.
Alvarado and the Fourth of July
The case grew out of a Fourth of July protest at an immigrant detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, south of Fort Worth. Protesters arrived with a plan to set off fireworks as part of a noise demonstration, and some demonstrators vandalized cars in the parking lot, a guard shack, slashed the tires on a government van, and broke a security camera before the shooting.
Nine activists were found guilty in March after the three-week jury trial. Zachary Evetts, Autumn Hill, Savanna Batten, Elizabeth Soto, and Meagan Morris received 50-year sentences, while Maricela Rueda received 70 years and was also convicted of corruptly concealing a document or record. Evetts, Hill, Morris, and Rueda were acquitted on attempted murder and firearms charges.
Song and McQuade
Song told the court he fired at Lt Thomas Gross because Gross had his weapon drawn and he believed Gross was about to shoot a protester. He said, "I never want to see good people, standing for what they believe in, gunned down in the street," then added, "Now 21 people have been arrested, have been persecuted, have been punished." He also said, "For knowing me or being my friend?"
Barbara McQuade said she would have expected lengthy sentences in the ballpark of 15 to 25 years, but nothing like 50 to 100 years. The gap points to how the judge appears to have treated separate counts one after another instead of running them at the same time, which is how prison terms are often kept lower in multi-count cases. That is why a 100-year sentence can come from a stack of convictions rather than a single charge.
Department of Justice
Todd Blanche said, "The sentences handed down today make clear that Antifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities will face swift and uncompromising justice." The administration has framed the case as a test of its effort to crack down on dissent, and the severity of the terms means this ruling now sets the tone for the rest of the defendants already sentenced in the same case.
The one unanswered issue is how the judge calculated the 100 years from the individual counts. Song’s own words put the dispute in plain terms: he says he acted to stop a shooting, while the court treated the same moment as attempted murder of an officer of the United States. That split is what makes this sentence hard to read as anything other than punishment at the far end of the range.
