Clockwise from left: Michael Sparks, the first rioter to breach the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is seen on surveillance footage; Sparks is seen entering the Capitol through a broken window; Sparks, circled in red, approaches police inside the Capitol (Department of Justice).
The Kentucky man who was the first to breach the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6 and then joined a mob of rioters chasing a police officer up several flights of stairs will spend years behind bars.
Michael Sparks, 47, was convicted in March of multiple felonies and misdemeanors in connection with the Jan. 6 attack. As Law&Crime reported at the time, Sparks climbed through a window smashed apart by convicted Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola, who used a stolen police shield to break into the building.
After Sparks landed inside the Capitol, law enforcement screamed for him to stop — but he charged ahead anyway, ignoring multiple orders to leave the building, prosecutors said.
“Instead, he walked to the front of the ground and confronted the officer they had chased up the stairs. He yelled, ‘This is our America! This is our America!’ as he grew increasingly agitated,” a statement from the Justice Department notes.
The sentence handed down Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Donald Trump appointee, was a mere four months less than the 57 months prosecutors had sought. It also comes after the most serious charge, obstruction of an official proceeding, was dropped after the Supreme Court found that the charge does not apply to accused Jan. 6 rioters who targeted Congress as it prepared to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral win.
The charges against Sparks, along with his trial and conviction, do not appear to have lessened his belief in the baseless conspiracy theory that the election results were fraudulent.
“I am an American citizen who believes to this day that we are in tyranny,” Sparks told Kelly during the hearing Tuesday, according to NBC News reporter Ryan J. Reilly. Sparks reportedly added that he believes that the 2020 election was “taken from the American people.”
Kelly told Sparks that he could believe what he wanted, but those beliefs didn’t give him the right to attack the Capitol.
“I don’t really think you appreciate the full gravity of what happened that day and frankly the full seriousness of what you did,” Kelly said, according to the NBC report. Insisting that the events of Jan. 6 “just cannot happen again,” Kelly reportedly told Sparks that the rioters had interfered with a process “foundational to our country’s governance.”
“What a dangerous precedent Jan. 6 set. What a Pandora’s box it opened,” Kelly said, according to NBC News. He also said that America had a “perfect score” for peaceful transfers of power before Jan. 6.
“We can’t get that back,” Kelly reportedly said. “It’s gone.”
Kelly’s sentence was above the recommended sentencing guidelines range of 15-21 months, the NBC report noted.
Lawyers for Sparks had asked for a sentence of 12 months of home incarceration.
“Mike can be redeemed,” his attorney wrote in his sentencing memo. “He is worthy of redemption.”
According to the federal docket, Sparks will be allowed to self-surrender, although a surrender date was not indicated.
Brandi Buchman contributed to this report.
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