A Conway truck driver who assaulted a police officer during the U.S. Capitol riot should be sentenced to time served, according to a sentencing memorandum filed Saturday by his attorneys.
Peter Francis Stager, 44, has been in the District of Columbia jail since his arrest on Jan. 14, 2021.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 24 in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Stager is “humbled, contrite, and extraordinarily remorseful for his actions,” according to his lawyers.
Prosecutors have recommended a sentence of 6½ years, followed by three years’ supervised release, and a fine of $31,627. According to his plea agreement, Stager will pay $2,000 restitution.
Stager pleaded guilty in February to one count of assaulting a police officer. Six other charges against him are to be dismissed at sentencing, as part of the plea agreement.
Stager used a flagpole to beat a Metropolitan Police officer who had been knocked down and dragged from an archway onto the Capitol steps, according to court filings. An American flag was affixed to the pole.
In their sentencing memo filed Friday, prosecutors called it a brutal assault, saying Stager struck the officer at least three times. The officer suffered bruises and abrasions.
Afterward, Stager declared that “Death is the only remedy” for lawmakers in the Capitol and police trying to protect the building.
According to federal sentencing guidelines, Stager should be sent to prison for 63 to 78 months. But a judge can depart from those guidelines.
Prosecutors want U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras to sentence Stager to the guidelines’ maximum. Stager’s attorneys want the judge to go below the guidelines’ minimum and sentence him to the 29 months he has already served.
Stager’s 29-page sentencing memo included some redacted sections and was accompanied by family photos and letters of support.
Stager never knew his biological father, according to the filing. Stager had at least five biological siblings.
Stager, his mother and his siblings were homeless for the first years of his life in California, according to his sentencing memo. They slept under benches and slides in a park. Stager’s mother taught her children to steal from stores.
“At around the age of six, Mr. Stager’s mother abandoned him and his siblings at a motel,” according to the court filing.
The children became wards of the state. Stager and one of his sisters were separated from the other siblings, never to see them again.
After living in foster homes, Stager and his sister were adopted in 1988 and moved with their new family to Arkansas.
Stager attended Jacksonville High School. He participated in baseball, track and football.
“He was even sent a letter of interest from Penn University to play football,” according to his sentencing memo.
“He chose to be distracted by girls and dropped football,” his adoptive father wrote in his letter to Judge Contreras. “I began to lose hope in him. The thing he had going for him is he was always a hard worker.”
After graduating from high school in 1998, Stager worked as a carpenter on the crew that built the William J. Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, according to his sentencing memo. He learned the trade from his grandfather.
In 2004, he married a respiratory therapist. They are raising two children, ages 15 and 17.
“Mr. Stager’s wife regards Mr. Stager as ‘a wonderful father’ who is always ‘encouraging and supportive’ of their children,” according to the court filing.
“In the wake of his childhood, Mr. Stager took his own experiences and used them to build a life filled with love to a degree he never imagined,” according to his sentencing memo.
Although raised in a Catholic household for most of his life, Stager has increasingly embraced Islam since the 1990s, according to his sentencing memo.
Stager continues to pray for the police officer he attacked, according to the court filing. A letter Stager sent to the officer was included as an exhibit.
“I would like you to know that I’m sorry for any harm or injury you may have endured due to my actions or indirect actions on that tragic day,” Stager wrote in the letter. “I never had any intent or thought of going into the Capitol or that I was going to be engaged in a angry manner. I don’t have hatred for law enforcement let alone for anyone in my heart.”
On Jan. 5, 2021, Stager was working as a truck driver and was in Washington, D.C., “due to a scheduling conflict with his dispatch,” according to the sentencing memo.
“After delivering the load of produce he was transporting nearby, he made the choice not to drive back to Arkansas empty due to the cost of fuel and the fact that he would not be making money on an empty load,” according to his lawyers. “Mr. Stager then decided to make the most of the situation and watch the speech of outgoing President Trump the next day; this decision is one that Mr. Stager will regret for the rest of his life.”
In a letter to the court, Stager wrote: “I take full responsibility for my actions on the tragic day of January 6, 2021. I was not acting on behalf of an individual or group. I was however naïve, reckless, selfish, and emotionally unstable. I have caused a wake of devastation and pain to my loved ones, our community, and many others.”
Stager wrote that he saw someone injured, or possibly dead, in the crowd and couldn’t get police officers to help him move that person to safety.
“I was in a state of absolute shock and horror …” wrote Stager. “I cracked under the pressure and the crowd was in a full out medieval free-for-all.
“I am sorry for my outrageous behavior and to any officers who were injured, my family, and our Republic for any shame I have brought upon them,” Stager continued in his letter to the court.
His wife wrote the judge, saying Stager’s conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, was “completely out of character” for him.
“In the 23 years that I have known Peter he has never shown any type of anger much less violence,” she wrote.
Stager takes homeless people to lunch and got hotel rooms for a homeless family one time, according to his wife.
“Peter has always been very involved with his children’s school,” she wrote. “When our son was in pre-K, Peter bought and cut out wood for bird houses for not just our son’s class but the entire pre-K. He spent a whole day at the school helping each child build and decorate their own bird house.”
Stager’s sister also wrote to the judge.
“Peter has beat the statistics of his past,” she wrote. “He is a hardworking man. He works hard for himself and his family. He loved driving big trucks. He’s a jack of all trades. A go getter. … He has to be doing something productive. He’s happily married and has two kids. … Peter is a productive member of society. He loves helping people and takes pride in what he does.”
“He does deserve whatever punishment you deem necessary,” Stager’s adoptive father wrote in his letter to the judge. “I just hope you can consider what he has done with the good parts of his life and return him to all of us who love him.”
Stager’s “memorandum in aid of sentencing” was submitted by his attorneys, David Benowitz, Rammy G. Barbari and Amy C. Collins of Price Benowitz LLP in Washington, D.C.
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