A 25-year-old Columbia area man was sentenced to 13 months in federal prison on Wednesday for interfering with law enforcement during a riot at city police headquarters that grew out of a peaceful 2020 Black Lives Matter protest at the State House.
Xavier Isaiah Brown, who was 21 at the time of the riot, threw debris in a police car that had been set on fire by other rioters in the parking lot area at Columbia police headquarters, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lamar Fyall said during a hearing at the Matthew Perry courthouse. The debris acted as an “accelerant,” Fyall said.
During the hearing, Brown apologized and expressed remorse, saying his participation in the May 30 protest at the State House had been meant to be peaceful, but he had been caught up in the moment as the protest moved to the Vista and the police headquarters area. He currently has a job as a sanitation engineer.
Last December, Brown pleaded guilty to the charge of Interfering with law enforcement officers during a civil disorder. He had no criminal record except for a minor marijuana conviction.
Brown will also have to pay $3,000 in restitution for the police car, court officials said. He was represented by Austin Nichols and state Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland.
Federal Judge Joe Anderson pronounced sentence, noting that Americans have a right to peacefully protest — with the emphasis on “peacefully” — but violent protests cross over the line, he said.
Federal sentencing guidelines recommended a sentence of from 12 to 18 months, and Anderson noted his sentence was toward the low end of the guidelines.
Anderson also noted that the right to peacefully protest had been upheld by a famous U.S. Supreme Court case, Edwards vs. South Carolina, involving the 1960 illegal mass arrests of nearly 200 African American civil rights protesters at the South Carolina State House.
In that case, the protesters were peaceful, but South Carolina police officers arrested them anyway. The late civil rights attorney Matthew Perry, for whom the federal courthouse in Columbia is named, represented the protesters and took that case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he finally won. Perry later became a federal judge.
Anderson also said the sentence should serve as a deterrent and that it fits the crime.
More than a dozen police officers were injured during the May 30, 2020, riot in the Vista and at police headquarters.
The rioters were stopped from attacking the Columbia police headquarters by a phalanx of Columbia police officers joined by Richland County sheriff’s deputies. But stores in the downtown Vista area were damaged, along with multiple police cars, some of which were set on fire.
In all, some 90 persons were identified and charged with state crimes committed on those two days of Columbia riots. Columbia police reported that 24 police vehicles were damaged by broken windows, spray paint and fire. Two Columbia fire trucks were also damaged, according to an after-action police report. Injuries to officers included being struck by bottles, brick fragments and pieces of wooden barricades, as well as heat stroke.
Most of the cases have been handled in state court but some, such as Brown’s, were taken up by federal authorities.
In late May 2020, cities across America in Columbia were rocked by riots after the murder of an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, in Minnesota by Minneapolis police. Floyd’s slow death at the hands of a white police officer as other officers stood around was caught on video by a bystander. Four police officers were sent to prison for their role in Floyd’s death.
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