Benjamin Song was sentenced to 100 years in prison on Tuesday, the harshest punishment handed down in the Alvarado protest case and one that puts a defining mark on a prosecution built around violence, firearms and terrorism-related charges. He was convicted of attempted murder of an officer of the United States, firearm and explosives charges, riot and providing material support to terrorists.
The sentence came after a three-week jury trial in March that ended with nine activists found guilty over a Fourth of July protest at an immigrant detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, south of Fort Worth. Song fired an AR-15 from the woods and hit a police officer in the shoulder, though the officer survived.
Song has said he fired because he believed Lt Thomas Gross had his weapon drawn and was about to shoot a protester. In his telling, it was an act meant to stop a killing. The court saw something else and convicted him on the charges that produced the century-long term.
That gap between his account and the verdict helps explain why the sentence landed so hard. Barbara McQuade said she would have expected lengthy terms in the ballpark of 15 to 25 years, but nothing like 50 to 100 years. She also said judges usually run separate counts at the same time, or concurrently, rather than one after another. In Song's case, the court appears to have stacked the penalties one by one, which is how individual counts that might otherwise have produced decades turned into a total of 100 years.
He was not alone in drawing a severe sentence. Zachary Evetts, Autumn Hill, Savanna Batten, Elizabeth Soto and Meagan Morris each received 50 years in prison, while Maricela Rueda received 70 years. Evetts, Hill, Morris and Rueda were acquitted on attempted murder and firearms charges, though Rueda was also convicted of corruptly concealing a document or record.
In announcing the punishments, Todd Blanche said the sentences showed that antifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities would face swift and uncompromising justice. The case, which has been closely watched as a test of the Trump administration's approach to dissent, turned on a protest that began as a noise demonstration but ended with vandalized vehicles, a damaged guard shack, slashed tires and a broken security camera.
For Song, the unanswered question is not whether the case is over but how a single conviction set can produce a century in prison. The judge's decision to run the counts consecutively, rather than concurrently, is what made the difference.
