Although she felt her husband’s Jan. 6 criminal trial went very well on the evidence, Sarah McAbee tried to be a realist, knowing no defendant across 660 cases related to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, has been acquitted by a Washington D.C. jury.
“My heart was just pounding out of my chest as I was trying to sit there so strongly for him,” Ms. McAbee said, referring to her husband, Ronald Colton McAbee, 29, of Unionville, Tennessee.
“To hear these words that were coming out of their mouth, it was ... a very surreal moment,” Ms. McAbee, 28, said of the moment the guilty verdicts were read on five felony charges. “Something that we waited for for over two years—this exact moment.”
Mr. McAbee was found guilty of inflicting bodily injury on Metropolitan Police Department Officer Andrew Wayte, civil disorder, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, and engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon.
On Sept. 25, Mr. McAbee pleaded guilty to assaulting or resisting a police officer and a misdemeanor count of an act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings. The felony assault charge was for pushing a Metropolitan Police Department officer after the officer struck his broken shoulder just outside the Lower West Terrace tunnel.
Mr. McAbee will be sentenced on Feb. 29, 2024, by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras.
‘Trying to Help You’
According to the bodycam video shown at trial, Mr. McAbee asked Mr. Wayte, “You ready?” Mr. Wayte said, “Let go of me, man,” to which Mr. McAbee replied, “I’m trying to help you.”Mr. Wayte then said, “I know, I know. Help me up,” according to the video.
The video shows Mr. McAbee trying to shield Mr. Wayte, shouting at rioters who tried to grab him.
The first time that video was played by prosecutors in court, shortly after Mr. McAbee’s August 2021 arrest, there was no audio track. A defense investigator found the audio portion, which put the encounter in a much different light.
By the time closing arguments arrived in the trial, prosecutors seemed to cede the point that Mr. McAbee was trying to help Mr. Wayte on the steps. They then shifted the story, claiming Mr. McAbee committed an assault moments earlier when he first grabbed Mr. Wayte’s body-armor vest.
“The prosecution was like, ‘Well, maybe he was trying to help that day. Maybe you can hear in the audio that he’s trying to help. And there was a woman who was dead that he was trying to get to. Maybe that is what initiated this whole thing,’” Ms. McAbee said.
“Are you kidding me?” Ms. McAbee said. “We’re on day seven of trial. And you’re sitting here agreeing to what we’re saying, finally? But then still the jury came back and convicted him on every charge.”
As the verdicts were read, Ms. McAbee said she watched the hope on her husband’s face wash away.
“That I think that hurt worse than hearing what the jury had to say,” she said. “I couldn’t even give him a hug after it. Couldn’t even talk to him. After that, he could wave when he left. I had to wait for him to get back [to jail] that evening just to be able to make sure that he was okay.”
One concerning factor in the trial was the jury pool included five potential jurors who sat on another D.C. jury as recently as a week prior, Ms. McAbee said. That fact also worries defense attorneys, as the jury pool has been stretched beyond its limits by the unprecedented number of Jan. 6 cases.
“We had five jurors out of the initial 70 that had just sat on a jury last week. That’s what’s happening because they are clogging up these cases, January 6 cases, they’re clogging up the system,” Ms. McAbee said. “And so you’re having repeat jurors that ... just literally last week were sitting on a jury, and they were on this jury.”
Another issue came up during deliberations when jurors reported that prosecutors had sent back a hard copy of evidence the jury was not supposed to have, Ms. McAbee said.
Justice for Rosanne
Ms. McAbee said her husband was determined to take his case to trial because he wanted to call attention to the tragic death of Rosanne Boyland, 34, of Kennesaw, Georgia.Ms. Boyland collapsed at the mouth of the tunnel after being shot in the chest with a pepper ball fired by a police officer. The crowd around her began a stampede after police deployed an unknown chemical agent in the tunnel that witnesses said sucked the oxygen from the atmosphere.
She lay unconscious on the sidewalk while protesters begged police to get paramedics. A few minutes later, MPD Officer Lila Morris inexplicably began beating Ms. Boyland in the head and ribs with a hardened walking stick. Mr. McAbee was part of a group of bystanders who started CPR on Ms. Boyland after she was pulled away from the police line.
Mr. McAbee and several other men carried Ms. Boyland back to the police line, where he shouted, “Get a medic!” He began to do CPR just before officers pulled Ms. Boyland inside the building. She was pronounced dead at a hospital more than 90 minutes later.
“No other person had taken this all the way to a jury trial to get the information out about Rosanne,” Ms. McAbee said. “At some point, whether it’s two years, 10 years, 20 years from now, he’s going to come home.
“His thought process has always been, ‘Rosanne is never coming home. What better position for me to be in for me to fight for her justice?’”
“I’m sorry that I couldn’t reach her in time,” Mr. McAbee wrote. “Lord knows I tried. The police beat us with sticks, and batons, and sprayed us every time we got near her. They never tried to help her while she lay there.”
Ms. McAbee said her husband recently sent the Boylands another letter.
Both of the McAbees have been impacted by what the Boyland family has suffered.
Facing the Future
She said her husband’s case could be significant due to a number of issues that might end up on appeal.“I’ve wanted to encourage him to fight out his case because I believe it’s one of those cases that could go to the Supreme Court,” Ms. McAbee said. “It could change things years from now for people.
“The pardons and everything that is going to come down for these guys, that’s all fine and dandy. But we have to make sure that this never happens again.”
Their Christian faith has been a key to keeping the McAbees strong throughout the more than two-year ordeal—and for whatever time is yet to come before he is released from custody.
“As we say, this is bigger than all of us,” Ms. McAbee said. “So we’ve just continued to keep the faith and walk this tightrope because we know who’s in control, and the end is not here yet.”
