Notable (below-guideline) sentence for key anti-abortion activist after trial conviction

As reported in this Washington Post article, a “30-year-old antiabortion activist who kept fetuses in a Capitol Hill home was sentenced Tuesday to nearly five years in prison for illegally blockading and breaking into a reproductive health clinic in D.C.” Here is more about a number of sentencings in this case:

Lauren Handy, of Alexandria, Va., received a 57-month term and became the first person to be sentenced for the combination of conspiring to violate reproductive health rights under a federal civil rights law and violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a 1994 law that prohibits threats to and obstruction of a person seeking reproductive health services or providers….

Handy, convicted by a jury last year, was charged along with nine others after the group launched an antiabortion blockade at the Washington Surgi-Clinic in 2020.  Handy’s was the first of four clinic-access cases pending trial or sentencing around the country in which the Justice Department under the Biden administration has charged defendants with obstructing clinic access in combination with a conspiracy against rights — a civil rights law passed after the Civil War that makes it punishable by up to 10 years in prison to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person” exercising a constitutional or legal right. Violations of the 1994 clinic access law alone are punishable by up to a one-year prison term.

Handy gained additional notoriety when, on the same day a federal indictment was announced against the defendants, D.C. police discovered five fetuses in a Capitol Hill rowhouse basement where she had been staying. The criminal trial, however, had nothing to do with the fetuses that antiabortion activists say they collected from outside the same D.C. abortion clinic, and authorities have not charged anyone in that matter.

Handy and co-conspirators live-streamed a preplanned “lock-and-block” blockade that used force and physical obstructions to shut down the D.C. clinic on Oct. 22, 2020, Kollar-Kotelly said in summarizing trial evidence. Prosecutors said Handy was the leader of the group that orchestrated the blockade and recruited participants, arranged lodging and used a fake name to book an appointment. A nurse was injured and patients were traumatized in the incursion, including two women who begged to enter for treatment and one who suffered a medical emergency, the judge said.

“It was not peaceful, and it was not contemplated to be peaceful,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sanjay Patel argued in a 90-minute sentencing hearing. The government sought a sentence at the high end of a 63- to 78-month range recommended by federal guidelines — up to 6½ years — based on Handy’s leadership role, obstructive conduct, the violence and victims in the case.

Prosecutors called her “an active antiabortion extremist” who has organized clinic blockades around the country, resulting in four convictions for which she was sentenced up to 45 days in jail, with all terms suspended or pending appeal. Patel also cited the need for deterrence, saying that without a stiffer punishment “the purpose of sentencing may be lost on this defendant.”

Also sentenced Tuesday with Handy were John Hinshaw, 69, of Levittown, N.Y., who received 21 months of incarceration; and William Goodman, 54, of the Bronx, who was sentenced to 27 months….

Defense attorney Martin A. Cannon cited more than nine letters of support for Handy and likened her actions to those of civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, saying she “did not act out of self-interest, but … at her own peril,” in good faith and out of conscience.  Cannon said Handy was a peaceful, kindhearted person with a history of philanthropic work in Haiti and on behalf of homeless people who was “trying to save babies from being killed.”  He continued, “Lauren did nothing on her own that was violent or forceful.  She did not, I submit, anticipate any of the force that resulted.”

Kollar-Kotelly said that to the contrary, the evidence showed that Handy and her co-plotters planned to push their way into the clinic, and fretted beforehand over possible use of violence.  She said the case was “not a referendum on abortion, but violation of civil rights” of patients and medical practitioners.

The judge concluded that while Handy and her co-conspirators were entitled to have “very strong views about abortion,” she found it disheartening that they “showed no compassion or empathy to women patients who were human beings in pain and seeking medical care.”

Handy and seven co-defendants, including Idoni and Geraghty, were found guilty on all counts in two federal jury trials in August and September.  Another was convicted at a bench trial before a judge in November, and one pleaded guilty. The man who pleaded guilty, Jay Smith, 32, of Freeport, N.Y., received 10 months last year after pushing a nurse who fell and suffered an ankle injury in the blockade.  The remaining six will be sentenced later this month.

Kollar-Kotelly noted that other civil rights conspiracy cases involving the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act are pending in Tennessee, Michigan and Florida. Because no one else has been sentenced under the laws in combination, she said she relied on federal sentencing guidelines for the alleged and convicted conduct.

I have not followed these cases closely, so I may not have the facts right, but this certainly seems to be another situation involving a trial penalty.  Handy, who seemngly did not directly commit any violence, gets almost 5 years in prison after exercising her tiral rights; Smith, who injured a nurse, is sentenced to only 10 months after pleading guilty.  Handy does seem to have some aggravating history and a leadership role, so the differential here may be the result of various other factors.  But still, based on the facts reported here, I am not sure other facts really full account for Handy getting a sentence nearly six times longer.