People would be stunned to learn what really happened during trials like his, he said. Not a single Republican sat on his jury in Democrat-dominated Washington, D.C.
Prosecutors presented five witnesses against him, and “every single one of them said they didn’t know me,” except for the FBI agent who tracked him down after Jan. 6, he said.
Investigators never asked him about the fatal shooting of Babbitt—which Sheppard witnessed from about 10 feet away. U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd fired the fatal shot and faced no criminal charges.
Babbitt, a stranger to Sheppard, was shot as she attempted to climb through the broken window in a doorframe.
Although the presidential pardon didn’t produce the reputational boost Sheppard had hoped for, “I’m so grateful for the pardon; I’m so grateful that President Trump included every January Sixer.”
Because of a court ruling involving Jan. 6 prosecutions, a judge reduced Sheppard’s 19-month prison term to six months. Thus, he was released in May 2024. Still, he benefited from the pardon in January 2025; it restored his unblemished criminal record and removed restrictions he had faced.
Although he was represented by a public defender, Sheppard took a financial hit after the arrest and the ensuing prosecution.
“We need accountability for FBI agents and prosecutors and judges who let this go down, because, in my opinion, what they did to us January Sixers is … one of the worst human rights abuses and biggest stains on our country’s history,” Sheppard said.
On an early February morning in 2021, in Tampa, Florida, Paul Hodgkins III awakened to the sound he had been dreading: an insistent, loud banging on his front door.
He knew the FBI had caught up with him for entering the Senate chamber of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, six weeks prior.
Wearing only a towel around his waist, Hodgkins opened the door. An officer yelled for him to put his hands up. Hodgkins tried to comply while also attempting to keep the towel in place with his elbows.
“But he handcuffed me behind my back, and left me standing naked in my living room when they all came barreling in,” Hodgkins said, describing the humiliating circumstances of his arrest at his duplex.
At that moment, Hodgkins felt the weight of the federal government crushing him—later reinforced when he saw the words, “The United States of America vs. Paul Hodgkins” on legal paperwork.
Hodgkins, who had no prior criminal record, also gained unwanted notoriety that summer when he became “the very, very first person who was sentenced to prison” for the events of Jan. 6.
At a lawyer’s urging, he pleaded guilty to a single charge and was sentenced to eight months in prison
“My pardon looks great on paper,” Carpenter said. “And then I say, ‘Wait a minute. It should never have happened to begin with.’”
While she is grateful that the pardon led to her release about midway through a 22-month prison term, Carpenter had filed an appeal. She was hoping to have her convictions overturned, and “that’s why I didn’t want the pardon, in a sense,” she said.
She knows of other pardoned defendants who feel similarly conflicted. Like many of the pardoned, Carpenter alleges she was convicted in an unfair trial based largely on falsehoods.
“I didn’t get tried by a judge and jury,” she said. “I got tried by political activists.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/year-after-pardons-freed-january-6-prisoners-tell-their-stories
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